
Class , 

Book i 
GopyriglitS . 



CSPYREGHT DEPOSIT 



A VILLAGE IN PICARDY 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/villageinpicardyOOgain 



OtK. ***#**. 




A Well-Known Tune 



t*wM„ €f(f 



A VILLAGE IN 
PICARDY 

BY 

RUTH GAINES 

AUTHOR OF "THE VILLAGE SHIELD," ETC. 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON 

President of Smith College 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



A 



r^ 



Copyright, 1918, 
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

All Rights Reserved 



JUL 26 19 



Printed In the United States of America 



©GU499863 



PREFACE. 

The history and the work of the Smith Col- 
lege Relief Unit in the Somme is known wher- 
ever reconstruction work in France is spoken 
of. This brief account does not purport to 
give anything but a small cross-section, the 
picture of but one of the villages in our care. 
It is told in the first person to make the tell- 
ing easier. As I have said, of all our villages, 
Canizy was the most beloved. All the Unit 
had a share in it. 

The picture is given as it was seen day by 
day. What was true in this section, may not 
be true in another. Here the German re- 
treat was so rapid that the devastation, though 
appalling, was not complete ; whole avenues of 
trees were left standing in places, and only two 
churches were dynamited, by contrast with 
the two hundred and twenty-five destroyed 
throughout the region devastee. It was per- 

vii 



viii Preface 

haps in more calculated ways that the Prus 
sians here vented their spite ; in the burning of 
family pictures, the wrecking of machinery, 
the cutting of the trees about the Calvaries, and 
the taking away of the bells from the church 
towers. They left behind them here, as every- 
where, ruin and silence; a silence of industry, 
of agriculture, of all the normal ways of life; 
a silence which has given the plain of Picardy 
the name of "The Land of Death." 

Ruth Gaines. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Un Village tout oublie .... 3 

II Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour ... 16 

III M. Le Maire 35 

IV Crux, ave! ........ 48 

V Mme. Gabrielle 61 

VI VoiLA LA MlSERE 74 

VII Nous SOMMES DIX 88 

VIII Une Distribution de Dons .... 100 

IX En Permission 113 

X A la Ferme du Calvaire .... 129 

XI Les Petits Soldats ...... 139 

XII M. L'Aumonier 151 

XIII Heureux Noel 162 

XIV Fidelissima, Picardie 176 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



A Well-Known Tune Frontispiece 

Map of the German Retreat 2 ...... 2 

"They are over there" 12 

"What, another little Brother!" 17 

"Only that much Bread!" 44 

"Is that wounded Man a Boche?" .... 51 

"He is big already" 58 

"I didn't do that!" 63 

"Once, before the War, the Pralines were 

two for a Sou" 80 

"A Cut of a Sword-scabbard!" 114 

"If I were grown up!" 124 

"Our House used to be there!" 132 

"And do the little Boche children hug their Fa- 
ther?" 143 

"Company, halt!" . . . ' 148 

"If it hadn't been for the Officer. . ." ... 157 

"He has not come. He has been mobilized ..." 165 

"Well, if we don't see Santa Claus, we may see a 

Zeppelin" 171 

"And if it freezes tonight?" 174 

"Oh yes, Papa is strong!" 182 

Plan of the Village 188 

r From Poulbot's Des Gosses et des Bonhommes. 
2 From the Almanach Hachette. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

No one, it may safely be said, can see this 
war as a whole. The nations taking part in it 
girdle the world, and no people is unaffected 
by it. Real knowledge can be gained of only 
comparatively small sections of the conflict, 
and we are grateful to those who, knowing a 
small section, give us a faithful account of their 
own observation and experience, and refrain 
from speculation and generalisation. 

Among the infinitude of tragedies few have 
appealed more poignantly to our imaginations 
than those involved in the devastation of Pi- 
cardy ; and among the attempts at salvage few 
details have attracted the sympathetic atten- 
tion of America more powerfully than the ef- 
forts of the Smith College Relief Unit. Their 
heroic persistence in the work of evacuation 
under the very guns of the great offensive of 

March, 1918, made the members of the Unit 

saii 



xiv Introductory Note 

suddenly conspicuous; but the more pic- 
turesque feats of that terrible emergency had 
been preceded by a long winter of quiet work. 
The material results were largely wiped out; 
the spiritual results will remain. It is the 
method of that work as carried on in a single 
village that is described in this little book. 
When we have read it we know what kind of 
people these were who clung to the remnants 
of their homes in the midst of desolation. Their 
character and temper are depicted with kindly 
candour; they were very human and very much 
worth saving. When the time comes for re- 
construction on a large scale, such an account 
as this will be of value in enabling us to realise 
the nature of the task and in teaching us how 
to set about it. 

Smith College is proud of what these grad- 
uates have done and are doing; and this note 
is written to assure the Unit rather than the 
outside world that those who have to stay at 
home see and understand. 

William Allan Neilson. 

Smith College, 

Northampton, Mass, 



A VILLAGE IN PICARDY 



mi 




dul7au2t mars 1917^. „ 
Y//A Avancefranco-Bngktse' 

du2f mars tiuS mat 
nTTTi batailte detaSomme fSQlSSONS 
^"^ Quiffet-Tiavembrel916). / 



The German Retreat 



A VILLAGE IN PICARDY 



CHAPTER I 

UN VILLAGE TOUT OUBLIE 

AS a relief visitor, in a Unit authorized by 
the French Government an secours dans 
la region devastee, I have lived recently in the 
Department of the Somme. There I had in 
my care a village with a personality which I 
venture to think is typical of Picardy. As 
such, I would present it to you. 

It was on a winter's morning, by snow and 
lantern light, that I traversed for the last 
time a road grown familiar to me through 
months of use, the road which led from our 
encampment, known as that of the "Dames 
Americaines" at Grecourt, past the railroad 
station of Hombleux to the hamlet of Canizy. 



4 A Village in Picardy 

It leads elsewhere, of course, this road; to the 
military highway for instance, which has 
already seen in the last three years three 
momentous troop movements : the advance and 
retreat of the French, the advance and retreat 
of the Germans, and, again, the victorious 
sweep of the French and British armies which 
reclaimed, just a year ago, the valleys of the 
Somme. It leads to the front, that fluctuating 
line, some twelve miles distant, in the shelter 
of which we have lived and worked for the 
ruined countryside. It is an important route, 
on some occasions choked with artillery, on 
others with blue columned infantry swinging 
down its vista arched with elms. Officers' cars 
flash by there, and deafening camions. But 
for me, until this the morning of my departure, 
it has led to Canizy. 

There is no longer a station at Hombleux, 
because the Germans destroyed it. One 
therefore paces the platform and stamps one's 
feet with the cold. Down the track, from the 
direction of Canizy, the headlight of the engine 



Un Village Tout Oublie 5 

will presently emerge. All about, the plain 
lies white and level; the break in the hedge 
where a footpath crosses the tracks to the vil- 
lage is almost visible. In fancy, I take it, 
past a fire-gutted farm house and eastward 
on a long curve across fields where the snow 
hides an untilled growth of weeds. The high- 
way which parallels the railroad, recedes in a 
perspective of marching trees, till, topping a 
little rise, a wooden scaffold stands clear 
against the sky. It was formerly a German 
observation post. To the left, equally gaunt, 
rises the Calvary which marks the entrance to 
the village. And beyond, cupped in a gentle 
declivity, lie the ruins of Canizy, framed in 
snow. So I saw it last; so all the way to 
Amiens, and from Amiens to Paris, as the 
train bore me away, I saw it ; so in its misery 
and its beauty, I would picture it to you. 

You will not find my hamlet on any map 
of the region devastee with which I am famil- 
iar; it is not listed among the destroyed vil- 
lages of the Department, although it was 



6 A Village in Picardy 

looted, dynamited and defaced, even to the 
cutting of the oak trees about its Calvary. 
You would have to search minutely in history 
for any mention of it among the King's towns 
of Picardy which became famous in guarding 
his frontier of the Somme. Comparatively 
modern and quite insignificant, it lies beside 
a tree-bordered, dyked canal, one of many 
which tapped the rich plain and bore the prod- 
uce of farm and garden to the market centres 
of Peronne, Ham and St. Quentin. To this 
canal sloped its fields of chicory, leeks, pump- 
kins, potatoes, turnips, carrots and other gar- 
den truck. Crooked lanes, brick-walled or 
faced with trim brick cottages, led from it back 
through the village to higher ground. There, 
before the war, the grands cultivateurs, such as 
M. le Maire, and M. Lanne, who rents the old 
Chateau, would have ploughed and sown their 
winter wheat. 

In those days, Canizy had a railroad also, 
and I have heard how for three sous one could 
travel by it to Nesle. It took only eight min- 



Un Village Tout Oublie 7 

utes then, — but now! By it as well, one went 
more quickly than by canal to St. Quentin or 
Peronne with perhaps a hundred huge baskets 
of vegetables on market day. But the Ger- 
mans tore up the bed of the railroad and de- 
stroyed the locks of the canal. They blew up, 
too, the bridge on the main highway which used 
to pass the Calvary at the foot of the village 
street. Cut off, reached only by a circuitous 
and deep-rutted road which is impassable at 
certain hours every day owing to mitrailleuse 
practice across it, Canizy lapsed into oblivion. 
As its mayor said on our first visit, "Look 
you, it has been quite forgotten, — c'est un vil- 
lage tout oublie" 

In 1914, Canizy had 445 inhabitants. Of 
these, there were perhaps half a dozen sub- 
stantially well off, such as M. le Maire, pos- 
sessing ten hectares of wheat land, a herd of 
seven cows, four horses, thirty rabbits and fifty 
hens. Besides, M. le Maire, or his wife, was 
proprietor of one of the three village epiceries. 
Joined with him in respectful mention by the 



8 A Village in Picardy 

townspeople are the lessee of the Chateau, and 
various owners of property not only in Canizy 
but in the surrounding country. Of these 
gentry, not one apparently had been made 
prisoner by the Germans. They were to be 
found on their other estates, at Compiegne, at 
Ham, or in Paris. Even the real mayor was 
an absentee, so that the acting mayor, lame, 
red-faced and beady-eyed, was the only repre- 
sentative of landed interests left in the little 
town. He had had, however, a dozen or more 
neighbours scarcely less comfortably provided 
with worldly goods than himself: M. Picard, 
for instance, who owned extensive market gar- 
dens and employed six workers in the fields. 
He it was who did not suffer even during the 
German occupation, for was he not placed in 
charge of the ravitcdllement 2 . And though 
his friends the Germans took him away with 
them, a prisoner, did not his wife and children 
live well on his buried money, eh? O, Mme. 
Picard, elle etait riche. There were the 
Tourets, two brothers, who held connecting 



Un Village Tout Oublie 9 

high-walled gardens in the centre of the vil- 
lage, and their next door neighbour, the comely 
widow, Mme. Gabrielle. Directly opposite 
ranged the Cordier farm, comprising an or- 
chard of 360 trees, ten cows, two bulls, one 
ox, eighty-seven pigs, three horses, one hun- 
dred and fifty chickens, and one hundred and 
fifty rabbits. Smaller cottages there were, 
some rented, but most of them owned, where 
the families raised just enough for their own 
necessities, or worked for their more prosper- 
ous townsfolk. There were the village cobbler, 
the two store keepers who competed with the 
mayor, a sprinkling of factory hands who 
walked along the dyke a mile and a half to 
work in the brush factory at Offoy, and last 
on the street, but not least in social importance, 
the domestics of the Chateau. There were, 
too, the poor whom one has always; but in 
Canizy, so far as I could learn, they consisted 
of but two shiftless f amilies. 

The civic life of the village centred about 
its public school and its teacher, and, of course, 



io A Village in Picardy 

its cure and its church. The monotony of toil 
was relieved by market days and fete days and 
first communions and neighbourhood gather- 
ings. Of these last I have seen a few pictures, 
groups of wrinkled grandparents and sturdy 
sons and grandchildren stiffly posed in Sun- 
day best, yet happy in spite of it. Behind 
them pleached pear trees or grape vines make 
an applique against a patterned brick wall. 
But there are not many of the pictures even 
left, for you will understand, the Germans 
systematically searched them out and burned 
them in great piles. The one that I remem- 
ber best, a poor mother had torn out of its 
frame the night of her flight. "I could not 
think well," she said. "The Boches had 
wrenched my Coralie away — so lovely a child 
that every one on the streets of Ham turned 
to look at her curls as she walked — but I did 
save this. See, there she is, — how pretty and 
good, and that is my eldest, a soldier. He is 
dead. And that, with the accordion, is my 
seventeen-year-old Raoul, like his sister, a 



Un Village Tout Oublie n 

prisonnier civil. What do the Boches do, 
think you," she continued, "with such? One 
hears nothing, nothing. Never a letter, never 
a message. Even when Mme. Lefevre and 
Mme. Ponchon returned, they brought no 
word. The prisoners, evidently they are sepa- 
rated. One is told that they work and starve, 
—that is all." 

A community so homogeneous in its inter- 
ests, was bound to link itself intimately by 
marriage as well. The intricacies of the fam- 
ily trees of Canizy were a source of constant 
mental effort, as one discovered that Mme, 
Gense was really Mme. Butin, that is, she had 
at least married M. Butin, and that Germaine 
Tabary was so called because she was living 
with her maternal grandparents, whereas her 
father's name again was Gense, and her mother 
was known by the sounding title of Mme. 
Gense-Tabary. "But why these distinc- 
tions?" one continually demanded upon unrav- 
elling the puzzles for purposes of record. 




[They are over there! ! !] 



i& 



12 



Un Village Tout Oublie 13 

"Because, otherwise, one would become con- 
fused," was the reply. 

Such, peaceful, prosperous, yet stirred by 
family bickerings enough to spice its days, 
was Canizy before the war. 

Canizy to-day numbers just one hundred 
souls, fifty being children and fifty adults. It 
was in March, 1917, that the village was 
blotted out. Two years and a half of German 
occupation preceded that event. In every 
house German soldiers had been billeted; one 
sees now on the door posts the number of 
officers and men allotted, or the last warning, 
perhaps, in regard to concealed fire-arms. 
For two years and a half the inhabitants had 
been prisoners, for the same length of time 
there had been no school and no mass. Yet 
the villagers do not speak unkindly of their 
conquerors. They fared better than many, 
for they fell to the lot of the Bavarians, who 
are reputed to be more humane than the Prus- 
sians. Besides, Picardy is inured to invasions, 
which for centuries have swept across her 



14 A Village in Picardy 

plains. By them, fortitude has been inbred. 
But one day last spring, the Bavarians filed 
away northward. Prussians succeeded them. 
Quickly came the order for the villagers to 
evacuate their homes. At the same time, the 
able-bodied, men and women, youths and maid- 
ens, were seized and held. Weeping mothers, 
tottering grandfathers, and helpless children, 
— the remnant, — were driven forth with what 
scant possessions they could snatch, to the 
town of Voyennes, four kilometres away. 
There, huddled with the like refugees of other 
villages, they remained ten days. From it 
they could see the ascending smoke, black by 
day and red by night, and hear the detonations 
which marked the destruction of their homes. 
They returned to the blackened ruins, — as, in 
the words of a historian of the Thirty Years' 
War, their ancestors had done. "Les pay- 
sans," he says, "qui avaient survecu a tant de 
desastres etaient accourus dans leurs villages 
aussitot que les ennemis s'eloignerent de ce 
champ de carnage. Mais, sans ressources 



Un Village Tout Oublie 15 

d'aucune sorte, sans habitations, sans chevaux, 
sans bestiaux, sans instruments de culture, 
sans grains pour la semence, que pouvaient-ils 

faire? Mourir "* 

But our villagers, though equally pillaged in 
the year 1917, were not doomed to death. 
The Germans had retreated before the advanc- 
ing French and British armies, and the ruins 
of Canizy ere long were held by Scottish 
troops. 

*Deux Annees d'Invasion Espagnole en Picardie, 1635-1636. 
Aldus Ledieu. 



CHAPTER II 

LE CHATEAU DE BON-SEJOUR 

T N Canizy, after the Germans were through 
-*■ with it, not one of its forty-seven houses 
stood intact. Most were roofless shells, or 
fallen heaps of brick. An occasional ell, a 
barn, a rabbit hutch, or a chicken house, — such 
were the shelters into which the returning 
villagers crept. Nor was there furniture. 
Pillage had preceded destruction and loaded 
wagons had borne away the plunder of house- 
hold linen, feather mattresses, clothes presses, 
chairs or anything practicable, into Germany. 
Scattered through the ruins to this day lie iron 
bedsteads twisted by fire, the metal stands of 
the housewives' sewing machines, broken farm 
tools and fire-cracked stoves. One day, be- 
side a half -demolished wall, I came upon a 
group of little girls playing house. They had 

16 




- Uwut^v**- ****** 



OlAAS j **** 



**&** 



[What, another little brother? 
Yes, a little Belgian.] 



17 



1 8 A Village in Picardy 

marked off their rooms with broken bricks, set 
up for a stove a rusty brazier, and stocked 
their imaginary cupboards with fragments of 
gay china. A grey, drizzling day it was, and 
their toy menage had no roof. But was it 
more cheerless than the hovels they called their 
homes, where their mothers, like them, had 
gathered in the wreckage left by the Germans, 
— a stove here, a kettle there, and a "Boche" 
bed of unplaned planks, perhaps, with an im- 
provised mattress of grass? I paused to re- 
gard the play house. "What is this room," I 
inquired. "La cuisine" was the quick reply. 
"And this?" "La salle a manger." "But this 
next?" "Une salle a manger" came the 
chorus. "Then all the rest are salles a man- 
ger?" "Assurement" with merry laughter. 
"O, I see. Are you then so hungry at your 
house?" And I turned away with an uncom- 
fortable conviction that they were. 

One after another, if you listen, the village 
mothers will tell of their return; with what 
hope against hope they looked for some trace 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejoui; 19 

of vanished husbands, sons and daughters; 
with what despair they realised the utter ruin. 
"My cat," said one, "was the only living thing 
I found. She was waiting for me on the door- 
step." But those were fortunate who found 
even the door sills remaining to their homes. 
Those who were shelterless took possession of 
some semi-habitable corner of their neighbour's 
outbuildings, or even of cellars, and furnished 
them with what they could find. As I went 
about among them, in an effort to supply im- 
mediate needs, I was continually told: "That 
cupboard, you understand, is not mine. I am 
taking care of it for Mme. Huillard, who is 
with the Boches. When she returns, I must 
give it up." "This bed," — a very comfortable 
one, by the way — "belongs to M. de Cure, 
whom the Germans made prisoner." "Those 
blankets an English soldier gave me." "This 
stove" — in answer to a query as to whether a 
new one would not be appreciated — "well, to 
be sure, it has no legs, but one props it with 
bricks, et fa marche, tout de memel" The 



20 A Village in Picardy 

boast of the Prussians in regard to their handi- 
work was true: "Tout le pays n'est qu'un im- 
mense et triste desert, sans arbre, ni buisson, 
ni maison. Nos pionniers ont scie ou hache les 
arbres qui, pendant des journees entieres, se 
sont abattus jusqu'a ce que le sol fut rase. 
Les puits sont combles, les villages aneantis. 
Des cartouches de dynamite eclatent partout. 
L'atmosphere est obscurcie de poussiere et de 
fumee."* 

By the time of the arrival of our Unit, six 
months after the Great Retreat, our villagers 
had recovered from the shock of their sorrow. 
They had managed to save enough bedding 
and clothing for actual warmth; they had 
planted and worked their gardens; they were 
used to the simplest terms of life. This cour- 
age rather than the too-evident squalor, was 
what impressed one on a first visit to Canizy. 
Dumb endurance drew one's heart as no pro- 
testations could have done. It made me long 

*Almanach Hachette, 1918, quoted from the Berliner 

Tageblatt. 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour 21 

to make my home among my villagers, so that 
I might the more quickly meet their needs. 

But this could not be, because every habit- 
able cranny was crowded to capacity. Hence 
it was that I lodged with the rest of the Unit, 
four miles away, at the Chateau de Bon- 
Sejour. Again, you will not find my chateau 
so called upon the map. It is merely a name 
that represents to me six months of hardship, 
of comradeship and of some small achievement 
that made the whole worth while. 

At the Chateau, then, but not in it, lived the 
Unit. For the Chateau, a German Head- 
quarters, and a most comfortable one, in its 
day, had been wrecked in the best German 
style. There were seventeen of us, American 
college women, to whom the Government had 
entrusted the task' of reconstructing thirty-six 
of the 25,000 square miles of devastated 
France. Two were doctors, three nurses, four 
chauffeurs, and the rest social workers. 
Among them were a cobbler, a carpenter, a 
farmer, a domestic science expert ; and of other 



22 A Village in Picardy 

manual labor there was nothing to which they 
did not turn their hands. It was in the golden 
days of early September that my companions 
reached the Chateau allotted them in that in- 
definite area known as the War Zone, and be- 
came from that moment a part of the Third 
Army of France. But I, for reasons best 
known to the passport bureau of that army, 
did not arrive until October. The seventy- 
mile run from Paris was made in our own 
truck, driven by two of our chauffeurs. As 
we cleared the dusty suburbs and took the 
highway northward, war seemed very far 
away. To be sure, we often passed grey 
camions rumbling to or from the front, or saw 
fleeting automobiles containing officers whiz 
by. But the country, the fields of stacked 
grain or of freshly seeded wheat; the apple 
orchards, — sometimes miles of trees along the 
roadside festooned with red fruit, — poplared 
vistas of smoke-blue hill and valley, with 
church spires and red roofs in the distance, — 
all these spoke of peace. Even the air lay in 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour; 23 

a motionless amber haze, spiced with apples 
and wood smoke and ferns touched by frost. 
But suddenly war was upon us. As we topped 
a sharp rise we came upon an empty dugout, 
about which stood a shell-shattered grove. 
Lopped orchards followed, zig-zag trenches, a 
bombarded village set in fields bearing no 
crop but barbed- wire entanglements and tall 
weeds turned brown. The country became 
flatter as we hurried along, intent on reaching 
the Chateau before dark. At intervals we 
made detours around crumpled bridges. Oc- 
casionally a sentry halted us, to be shown our 
permits known as feuilles bleues. By this time 
the sun was setting and caught and turned to 
gold a squadron of aeroplanes. Like great 
dragon-flies they coursed and wheeled and 
presently alighted, to run along the fields to 
their canvas-domed hangars. In the after- 
glow, we could still see occasional peasants or 
soldiers working late at ploughing with oxen 
or tractors. But otherwise, mile on mile, the 



24 A Village in Picardy 

brown plain, dotted here and there with scrag- 
gly thickets, lay deserted. 

It was dusk when we turned off the main 
road between the half dozen dynamited farm- 
houses that once formed a tiny village, past 
the little church, and into the gate of the 
Chateau. To the rear of this ruined mass, set 
in a row as soldiers would set them, were the 
three baraques, or temporary shacks, which the 
Army had made ready for us. Very cheerful 
they looked that night with the lamplight 
streaming from open doors and windows, and 
the smell of savoury stew upon the air. 

But morning revealed what darkness had 
hidden: the destruction which this estate shared 
with the entire countryside. Of the noble 
spruces and poplars which had formed the two 
main avenues leading the one to the church and 
the other to the highway, only a ragged line 
remained; the rest lay as they had been felled, 
in tangles of crossed trunks. The Chateau 
itself, an imposing building as one viewed it 
through the frame of a scrolled wrought-iron 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour 25 

gate, proved to be a rectangle of roofless 
walls. The water-tower, draped in flaming 
ampelopsis, no longer held the reservoir which 
had supplied in former days the mansion, the 
greenhouses, the servants' quarters and the 
stables. The greenhouses themselves, the 
jardin d'hiver, and the orangerie, where were 
grown hot-house fruits, retained scarcely one 
unbroken pane of glass. Dynamite had been 
employed freely; but — an instance of German 
economy — the main roof of the greenhouse had 
been demolished by the well-calculated fall of 
a heavy spruce. In this same greenhouse were 
the remains of a white tiled tank, and a heating 
plant which had involved the construction of 
three new buildings. "Voila" said Marcel, the 
sixteen-year-old son of the gardener, as he 
pointed it out, "the officers' bath." 

Marcel and his mother (whom, we think, the 
Germans left behind because of her too shrewd 
tongue) still take unbounded pride in the 
place. Even before repairs were made on her 
own cottage, Marie routed Marcel out of a 



26 A Village in Picardy 

morning to weed the flower beds and to fence 
off what, by courtesy, she calls the lawn. By 
this last manoeuvre she renders difficult both 
the entrance and exit of our cars. She also 
refuses to open for us the wicket for foot pas- 
sengers, probably because in the days of Mme. 
la Baronne's hospitality there were none. 
Here entertaining was done on a patrician 
scale. A French officer who stopped in pass- 
ing, told us how he was in the habit of coming 
each year to hunt in season. There was a 
gallery of famous pictures. In short, the 
Chateau of his friend, Mme. la Baronne, was 
the show place of the countryside. "To 
think," said he, as he pointed to a sign still 
standing beside the gate, "to think that dogs 
were forbidden, — and yet the Germans came 
here!" Marie, having been left by her mis- 
tress in charge of the property, carries the re- 
sponsibility with seriousness. A letter ar- 
rives: Mme. la Baronne desires that the vege- 
table garden be always locked, and that no 
trees be cut. It is she, doubtless, who directs 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour 27 

that the lawn be preserved. "Poor Madame," 
sighs Marie, "she little knows. Pray heaven 
she may never return to see what the Boches 
have done!" 

With Marie's and Marcel's help, one can 
reconstruct from the ruins the gracious com- 
fort of the old estate, the hospitable kitchen, 
the chambers warm in winter and tree-shaded 
in summer, the wide balustrades where the 
guests sat in long summer gloamings, courting 
the breeze. It was Marcel who pointed out 
the view one gains from the steps of the 
Chateau, straight through gaping doors and 
windows, to the sundial from which radiated 
the alleys of the grove: bronze oaks and 
beeches, golden plane trees, spruces and tas- 
selled pines. 

How is the beauty of that day departed! 
Half of the grove lies now a waste of scrubby 
second growth and fallen timber, for here the 
Germans employed Russian prisoners as 
lumbermen. No longer the huntsmen and 
their ladies pace the alleys. Now, on almost 



28 A Village in Picardy 

any day you may see old women dragging 
branches from the woods to the basse-cour, to 
be cut up for fuel. Twenty-six of them, no 
men, and only two children, the wretched vil- 
lagers had found in the Baronne's stables their 
only shelter after the razing of their homes. 

Yet we entered the winter far less warmly 
housed than they. Our two-room baraques 
were supplemented in time by six portable 
houses which we had brought from America; 
two we used as dormitories and the other four 
as a dispensary, a store, a kitchen, and a din- 
ing room. Our furnishings were of the sim- 
plest; camp beds, a stove for each building, 
a table, camp stools, and shelves. Our wood — 
when we had any — was chopped by a vigorous 
old lady who walked a mile and a half from the 
nearest village to do it. Our laundry was done 
upon a stove a foot square in a small building 
known as the Morgue : such having been its use 
during the German occupation. Marie made 
our cuisine on her range in a hut which she had 
built into the ruins of her cottage. Zelie car- 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour 29 

ried food and dishes in baskets to and fro from 
kitchen to dining room, a quarter of a mile 
apart. The one luxury of our existence was 
hot water, prepared by Marcel in a huge caul- 
dron, and brought in covered metal pitchers to 
our doors. 

Only once did Marcel fail us, and that was 
because the rightful owner of the cauldron left 
the basse-cour for her newly erected baraque. 
She requested our kind permission to trans- 
port thither her property. "There is another 
cauldron at Buverchy, which I think you could 
rent in place of mine," she suggested. "It 
belonged to my cousin, Mme. Bouvet, and is 
now in Mme. Josse's yard. No one is using 
it." Marcel was dispatched to make inquiries, 
and later, with horse and wagon, to fetch the 
cauldron home. But meantime there had 
dawned a morning when we were not wakened 
by the clump-clump of Marcel's sabots, and 
the setting down of the water jug with a thud 
upon the frozen ground. 

For wood, we depended largely on the 



30 A Village in Picardy 

chivalry of nearby encampments of troops, 
French, English, Canadian or American, to 
whom our need became apparent. For food, 
we were supplied by the Army with our quota 
of bread and a soldier, M. Jean, to fetch it. 
Vegetables and some fruit we obtained from 
our villages, of which we had sixteen in our 
charge. Often these were presents, thrust 
upon us through gratitude ; nor could we pay 
for them. Meat was plentiful in all the towns 
of the Zone, where the Army was charged with 
supplying the civilian population with food. 
Anyone, going on any errand, marketed; and 
the dispensary jitney, which might have 
started in the morning with doctors, nurses, 
kits, and relief supplies, often returned at 
night overflowing with cabbages, potatoes, 
pounds of roast, bags of coal, and bidons of oil. 
Our relief supplies came through more reg- 
ular channels, largely from Paris, where one 
member of the Unit devoted all her time to 
buying. These were either shipped to the 
nearest railroad station, or sent by the French 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour 31 

Army, free of charge, in a thundering camion. 
We never knew when to expect this last, nor 
what it would contain. Sunday seemed a 
favourite day for its arrival. On one occa- 
sion, there were three pigs, loose and hungry, 
and no pen to put them in ; seventy-five crated 
chickens followed, with the request that the 
number be verified, and the crates returned. 
Such were the colonel's orders. But, seeing 
that the Unit carpenter had to construct a 
chicken yard, this command was modified by 
a judicious distribution of cigarettes, Mixed 
cargoes of Red Cross boxes, stoves, bundles of 
wool from the Bon Marche which had burst en 
route, and sundries, were even harder to deal 
with. 

We had no store room, The cave of the 
Chateau, seeping with tons of debris which in 
places bent with its weight the steel ceiling, 
and open along one whole side to the elements, 
— this contained oui dairy, our lumber, our 
fuel, our vegetables, our groceries, and our re- 
lief supplies. It abounded in rats, cats, and 



32 A Village in Picardy 

bats. But such as it was, it was the centre of 
our activities. By night often weirdly lighted 
with candles, by day never empty, laughter 
rather than complaints floated from its dim 
interior. Here we held our first store; here 
the children who had trudged over from 
Canizy, Hombleux or Esmery-Hallon waited 
in line for their milk ; here were assembled and 
tied up the thousands of packages for our 
fetes de Noel. As winter advanced, we pre- 
pared for a day in the cave by encasing our 
feet in peasants' socks and sabots, and our 
hands in worsted mittens. The soldiers in 
the trenches had nothing on us. 

Whether at home or on the road, our days 
were long and arduous, and seldom what we 
had planned. Even Sunday became part of 
the working week, for then we attempted to 
entertain our official supervisors and co- 
laborers, and all chance acquaintances. M. le 
Commandant of the Third Army has dined 
with us; the ladies of the American Fund for 
French Wounded, under whom we held our 



Le Chateau de Bon-Sejour 33 

section, have come to call; the Friends walk 
over from Esmery-Hallon where they are 
building baraques for the commune; a lone- 
some Ambulance boy who has tramped ten 
miles and must retrace his steps before dark, 
drops in; a squad of Canadian Foresters rides 
through the gate; reporters, accompanied by 
a French officer, harry us with questions. But 
most frequent, and most welcome of all our 
visitors, are our countrymen, the — th New 
York Engineers. They came from home, 
those men, to be the first of our army under 
fire. But during the early days of the autumn, 
their talk was not of their work, but of ours. 
They brought us slat walks, called duck walks, 
to keep us out of the mud, and wood, and 
benches, and stoves. They came with mando- 
lins and guitars and violins to give an enter- 
tainment to our villagers, and stayed for a 
buffet dinner and dance. They sent their 
trucks to take us in turn to a party at their 
encampment. But all that was before the 
Cambrai drive. As we, in our baraques, 



34 A Village in Picardy 

listened night and day to that bombardment, 
we little knew the heroic part taken in it by our 
Engineers. Surprised, unarmed, with pick 
and shovel they stood and fought; and later, 
hastily equipped with rifles, helped save the 
day for England on the bitterly contested 
front. But you have doubtless read of them 
in the papers, for they were the first of our 
soldiers to die in battle and to be mentioned in 
the orders of the day. 



CHAPTER III 



M. LE MAIRE 



BY rights, Canizy belongs with three other 
hamlets, to the commune of Hombleux. 
The mayor of Hombleux is therefore in reality 
also the mayor of Canizy. But each of the 
hamlets has an acting mayor besides. And, 
to complicate this matter of mayors still fur- 
ther, the real mayor of the commune has left 
his post to reside in his mansion in the Boule- 
vard Haussmann in Paris. Inquiring into 
the reason of his non-residence, I was told that 
he was broken in health, and belonged to a 
political party which, at the moment, was no 
longer in power. Hence the so-called mayors, 
with whom rests the welfare of our villages. 

Before the war, the present mayor of Hom- 
bleux was one of the grands cultivateurs. 
With Mme. la Baronne, Mme. Desmarchez 

35 



36 A Village in Picardy 

and M. Gomart, he owned most of the rich 
acres encircling the town. Hombleux itself 
contained then about 1200 inhabitants, and 
was an industrial as well as an agricultural 
centre, having a distillery and two refineries 
for sugar-beets. Of the factories, practically 
nothing now remains, and of the inhabitants, 
250 have survived the German deportations. 
Zelie, the kitchen maid, has told me of these 
last. "The first deportation," she said, "was 
one of five hundred. The officers came to the 
doors at seven o'clock with the names, and told 
us to be ready to start at dawn. O Mademoi- 
selle, the night ! All the neighbours ran to and 
fro ; all night we washed and sewed and ironed, 
and in the morning, each with a sack of fresh 
linen, my father, my sister, M. le Cure, — the 
flower of our village, — were marched away. 
And after, what weeping I" Zelie put down 
her broom to wring her hands, as if still dry- 
eyed from too much suffering. "The next 
time," she continued, "the Boches gave us 
no warning. They came at midnight, and 



M. Le Maire 37 

dragged us from our beds. "Did you then 
go?" I inquired. "But yes," she replied, and 
her eyes flashed. "They tried to make us 
work; there were five of us, friends, from our 
village. But work for the enemies of France? 
We would not! They put us in prison; they 
fed us almost nothing, but we would not work. 
One day they summoned us. 'Go,' they said, 
'go where you like, beasts of the Somme!' 
Hungry, foot-sore, travelling mostly by night 
from the frontier, we came home. It was mid- 
night when we reached Hombleux. In my 
own house, my mother had barred the door. 
I tapped on the window to wake her. At first, 
she would not believe that it was I. Even 
now, she looks at me with a question in her 
eyes as if asking continually, 'Zelie, is it 
thou?' " 

Our mayors have no such heroic past! 
They not only saved their own skins, but re- 
side to this day with their wives and daughters ; 
comely daughters of an age for the German 
draft. Of one it is more than whispered that 



38 A Village in Picardy 

he is a spy. Many carrier pigeons he had in 
his dovecote, and whether there were any con- 
nection or not, he knew of the impending Ger- 
man invasion, and left his comfortable house 
and growing crops, to spend the summer of 
1914 in Normandy. Nor did he return till 
the summer of 1917. Meantime, his little 
hamlet had held a town meeting of its refugees, 
and elected a lady as mayor. In fact, M. 
Kenet, on his return, found himself the only 
man in the village. He found also — a suspi- 
cious circumstance in the eyes of his neighbours 
— his house the only one undestroyed. I have 
talked with him there, looking out of his case- 
ment windows into a walle J garden, where the 
fruit trees are uncut, and the walks are still 
bordered with close-trimmed box. He as- 
sumes an injured air, recounting his unpopu- 
larity. It is unfortunate, but since M. the 
Deputy has again asked him to act as mayor, 
que voulez-vous? He is compelled. 

His superior, the mayor of the entire com- 
mune, did not fare so well. On our first visit, 



M. Le Maire 39 

we found him inhabiting a loft in his partially 
ruined barn. But despite his chubby person, 
this mayor is a man of action. Week after 
week, Hombleux receives shifting regiments 
of troops back from the trenches en repos. 
These are detailed for construction work. 
Carpenters set up the baraques, which the 
Government furnishes to homeless families; 
masons and bricklayers are slowly raising the 
walls of the village bakery. The mayor has 
taken his share of the materials and workmen, 
and is now housed in a two-room lean-to, with 
a new slate roof, and lace-curtained windows. 
Here, beside an open fire, he transacts busi- 
ness. 

He it is to whom returning refugees come 
to report and register; through him claims of 
damage (based on pre-war valuation of prop- 
erty) are filed, which the Government has 
promised to honor after the war. To him, 
requests for baraques are made, and sent by 
him to the Sous-Prefet of the Department, to 
be forwarded in turn to the Minister of the 



40 A Village in Picardy 

Interior, with whom such matters rest. The 
mayor calculates the amount of allocation or 
pension to which each family in the devastated 
area is entitled, varying according as they are 
refugies or rapatries, according to the number 
of bread-winners imprisoned or serving with 
the colors, according to the number of children, 
or, in some cases, to the decorations won by 
their soldiers, for decorations carry pensions.* 
This entire matter of income is adjusted finally 
for our district by the Prefet at Peronne. Be- 
sides housing and pensioning, the Govern- 

* Incomes as regulated in August, 1917. 
Allocation militaire: 

Soldier, 25 c. per day. 
Family, 1 fr. 25 c. for mother. 

1 fr. 25 c. for child 16 or over. 
75 c. for child up to 16. 

Allocation de refugie or chomage: 

Adults, 1 fr. 25 c. per day. 

Children, 50 c. per day. 
War Pensions: 

Widows of soldiers, 580 fr. per year. 

Children, each, 600 fr. per year. 
J&iformees: 

If wounded, a reforme receives a pension. 
M6daille militaire: 

This carries a pension. 



M. Le Maire 41 

ment has undertaken to supply a certain 
amount of cereals, coffee, sago and the like. 
These the mayor distributes. Furniture as 
well is provided by the Government: bed- 
steads, mattresses (not forgetting bolsters), 
stoves, cupboards, chairs, tables and batteries 
de cuisine. Before our coming to take charge 
of the district, the mayor signed the furniture 
requisitions which were understood by the for- 
tunate recipients to represent a part of their 
''indemnite de guerre! 3 He also had the even 
more delicate task of distributing relief sup- 
plies left in bulk by the Red Cross or other 
agencies on their hurried passage through the 
ruined villages. Naturally, the supply fell 
short of the demand; and it was with uncon- 
cealed pleasure that the Mayor at the instance 
of the Sous-Prefet turned over these two 
thankless tasks to us. Yet we found him — or 
rather his wife and daughter — always ready to 
advise and cooperate. On demand, they fur- 
nished immaculately penned lists of all inhabit- 
ants, whether grouped by sex and by age, by 



42 A Village in Picardy 

family, or by the main division of adults and 
juveniles. They know the number of families 
in each hamlet, the number of persons in each 
family, the name and the age of each. Much 
more they know, of gossip, and of human na- 
ture, and laughed, I fear a trifle derisively, at 
our manifest difficulties. 

All these activities, centring in the Mayor, 
belong to the civil administration of the De- 
partment. The Ministry of Agriculture has 
its share in reconstruction also, but is more 
independent of local officials, having an office 
of its own in the commune. To it belong the 
ploughing and seeding, the replacing of or- 
chards, and to a certain extent of livestock. 
But on all these matters, as to whose fields 
shall be ploughed, or who shall plant two apple 
trees or own a goat, the verdict of the Mayor is 
sought. He himself, you may be sure, is de- 
pendent on no such circuitous methods. To- 
gether with two other grands cultivateurs, he 
has bought an American tractor, a harrow, 
and a mowing machine. These can even be 



M. Le Maire 43 

hired for the same price as the government- 
owned tractors, which is forty francs an 
hectare. Over all reconstruction, considered 
as a part of the civil administration, preside 
the Sous-Prefet and the Prefet of the Somme. 

On the other hand, food supplies in general, 
such as bread, are controlled by the army. In 
fact, every detail of life in the War Zone is 
their care if they choose to assume it. Troop 
movements delay shipments; therefore there 
may be no bread. Cavalry needs fodder; the 
sergeant at Hombleux goes out to forage with 
rick and trio of white horses and buys it at 

a fixed price. Mme. N is ill; the army 

doctor visits her, and if she seems to him a 
menace to the health of the soldiers, he removes 
her to a hospital. In view of the military im- 
portance attached to the Zone, the confidence 
of the French Government in giving over a 
section of it to the care of a group of Amer- 
ican women, wholly unacquainted with the 
task before them, seems truly touching. 

In fact, it seemed appalling, as I learned 



M. Le Maire 45 

from day to day the problems for which I was 
myself responsible in Canizy. Not the least 
of these was its mayor. Unlike his confrere at 

B , M. Thuillard had not fled his property 

until forced to do so with the rest of the vil- 
lagers immediately prior to the Retreat of 
1917. During the occupation, he kept his 
store as usual. And even though his horses 
and cattle, his fat rabbits and plump chickens, 
were requisitioned by the Germans, they say 
that he was paid for them. To see him, how- 
ever, housed in a miserable hut, with a dirt floor 
so uneven that the very chairs looked tipsy; 
to hear the complaints of his querulous wife, 
and the references of his daughter to their for- 
mer comfort, was calculated to enlist one's 
sympathy. Mme. Thuillard was ill, and he was 
lame, and the daughter's husband was a pris- 
oner, and they had lost heavily, because they 
had the most to lose. All this they told me 
over the saucerless cups of black coffee which 
th^y offered me "out of a good heart." 
But when I considered the Mayor's duty 



46 A Village in Picardy 

to his village, my own heart hardened. Here 
is the entry I find in my notebook on my first 
survey of Canizy. "Canizy, dependence of 
Hombleux, Thuillard, Oscar, in charge. Cure 
of Voyennes has charge of the children; 4 k. 
away. No church, no school, no bread, no 
water fit to drink." There was something, of 
course, in the Mayor's own contention that the 
village had been forgotten; and one could 
understand why the Cure came only to burials 
when one saw him, — so ill he looked. But in 
M. Thuillard's barn were two stout horses, 
and two carts stood before his door. On his 
own business, he could travel. "Why, then," 
I inquired, "has he not fetched the bread sup- 
ply from Hombleux to which the village is 
entitled?" "Because he has nothing to gain," 
and the good wife I interrogated shrugged 
her shoulders and laughed. "Look you," she 
continued, "M. Thuillard is rich; 26 kilos of 
money he buried, and it is not in sous." This 
rumour, which gave the one-legged Mayor 
something of the air of a land pirate, I heard 



M. Le Maire 47 

on all sides. Even the school teacher of Hom- 
bleux repeated it; and her husband, an officer, 
nodded his head to emphasize his "Qui, c'est 



vrai" 



Of one of our mayors, however, I would like 
to record nothing but praise. Widow of a 
jsoldier, left with two little girls, and absolutely 
no other possession in the world, she ruled 
our home village at the Chateau with justice 
and dignity. She never complained. When 
at last the baraque on the ruins of her farm 
was completed, all except the fitting of the 
glass in the windows, she insisted on moving in 
so that we could make use of the space she 
vacated in our basse-cour. I met her one bit- 
ter evening shortly afterward, as I was return- 
ing from Canizy. "Is it not cold in the 
baraque, Madame?" I asked. "Oh, yes," she 
replied, "but what would you? It is so good 
to be at home!" 



CHAPTER IV 

O CRUX, AVE 

AS the aeroplanes fly, Canizy is perhaps 
three miles from the Chateau, or reck- 
oned in time, half an hour by motor and an 
hour on foot. But by either route, one turns 
into the village at the stark Calvary I have 
already mentioned, with its half obliterated 
inscription: Ave, O Cruoo. 

At our first visit, despite our novelty, Can- 
izy regarded us with indifference. We seemed 
to them doubtless one more of those strange 
manifestations of the war which had stranded 
them among their ruins. Incurious, apathetic, 
they passed us with sidelong glances, and went 
their ways. But this did not last long. The 
"Dames Americaines" did such extraordinary 
things! They gathered and bought up rags; 
they played with the children; they walked 

43 



O Crux, Ave 49 

fearlessly, even at night, across the fields to 
tend a sick baby; they slept — so the village 
children who had seen their encampment re- 
ported — on Uts-soldats. The village waked to 
a new interest, and it came about that one 
expected to be waited for by the gaunt old 
cross. 

Before my arrival, the routeing of our three 
cars had already been decided. Three times 
a week the Dispensary was held at Canizy, 
and once a week, on Monday, our largest truck, 
turned into a peddler's cart with shining tin- 
ware, sabots, soap, fascinators, stockings and 
other articles of clothing, made there its first 
stop. On the seat back of the driver and the 
storekeeper, or if there were not room for a 
seat, on top of the hampers, went also the chil- 
dren's department, consisting of two members. 
While the mothers, grandmothers and elder 
sisters gathered at the honk of the horn about 
the truck, the children, equally eager, followed 
the teachers to an open field for games. Or, 
did it rain, I have seen them of all ages from 



50 A Village in Picardy 

fourteen years to fourteen months, huddled in 
a shed, listening open-mouthed to the same 
tales our children love, which begin, in French 
as in English, with "Once upon a time." 

But when, after a three-days' inspection of 
our outlying domain, I asked our Director for 
the village of Canizy, I was given charge of all 
branches of our work there. This meant not 
interference but close cooperation with the 
other members of the Unit already occupied 
with its problems. Of all our villages, Canizy 
was the most beloved, not, perhaps, because its 
need was greatest, but because its isolation was 
most complete. No one could do enough for 
it. Were a sewing-machine to be repaired, the 
head of our automobile department, a mechan- 
ical genius, spent hours making it "marcher." 
The doctors, with their own hands, took time 
to scrub the children's heads. They came to 
me with every need that they found on their 
rounds, with the neighbourhood gossip, and 
with kindly advice. The teachers gave me the 
names of children requiring shoes; and, as the 




51 



52 A Village in Picardy 

work developed* asked in turn for recommen- 
dations in regard to opening a children's 
library. To the farm department, I made re- 
quests that we buy largely of fodder and 
vegetables, until we had literally hundreds of 
kilos of pumpkins, turnips and carrots bedded 
for us in the cellars, on call. To this depart- 
ment went also requisitions that Mme. Cordier 
be supplied with a pig, or M. Noulin with five 
hens, or Mme. Gense with a goat. Or, were 
there shipments of furniture to be delivered, 
one called again on the automobile depart- 
ment, which even through the drifts and cold 
of winter, kept at least one of its engines 
thawed and running every day. 

It will be seen that our scheme of material 
relief followed closely that laid down by the 
Government. Our method was simple : where 
the Government supplies were on hand, or ade- 
quate, we used them; whatever was lacking, 
even up to kitchen ranges costing three hun- 
dred francs, we attempted to supply. In this 
we had not only our own resources to draw on, 



O Crux, Ave 53 

but to a limited extent, those of the American 
Fund for French Wounded, and to a much 
larger extent, those of the Red Cross. In 
a huge truck came the goods from the 
Red Cross, driven by a would-be aviator who, 
when asked his name, replied bashfully, 
"Call me Dave." "Dave" was frequently 
accompanied by another youth of like ambi- 
tion, named Bill. And I will say that they 
handled their truck as if it were already a 
flying-machine. The first consignment of 
hundreds of sheets and blankets, the truck and 
the driver, all were overturned in our moat. 
It took a day to get them out. The next mis- 
hap was a head-on collision with our front gate. 
But the last, which I learned of just before 
I left, will best illustrate their imaginative turn 
of mind. Bill, the intrepid, having attempted 
to traverse a ploughed field, left his machine 
there mired to the body, and spent the night 
with us. He seemed a trifle apprehensive as 
to how his "boss" would take this exploit. 
Willing workers, however, were Dave and 



54 A Village in Picardy 

Bill. Unannounced, they came exploding up 
the driveway under orders to work for us all 
day. And many a time have we risked our 
necks with them, perched on the high front 
seat, careering along at what seemed like sixty 
miles an hour. 

But for my part, my usual mode of travel 
was on foot, and my orbit bounded by the 
Chateau, Hombleux and Canizy. In any 
case, even though I went over by motor, I was 
dropped at my village and walked back across 
the fields. As I grew better acquainted with 
the villagers, I came and went at will, spend- 
ing almost all the daylight hours — few enough 
in winter — with them. Every one has heard 
of the mud in the trenches. The clayey soil 
of our district, admirably adapted to the mak- 
ing of bricks, lends itself equally well to the 
making of mud. Continually churned by 
camions and marching troops, it becomes on 
the highways of the consistency of a puree, 
through which, high-booted and short-skirted, 
one wades. It is therefore a relief to turn off 



O Crux, Ave 55 

by the footpath beyond Hombleux, though it 
plunges for the first quarter of a mile through 
a bog. Of a sunny day, birds sing in the 
hollow, wee pinsons perched on ragged hedges 
answering one another with fairy flutes. 
Farther on, yellow-breasted finches dart over 
patches of mustard as yellow, and sing as they 
fly. Raucous crows, whose gray-barred wings 
make them far more decorative than ours, and 
the even more strikingly marked magpies, 
darken in great flocks the newly ploughed and 
seeded wheatfields which in increasing areas 
border the path. A sudden movement sends 
them whirring like a black and white cloud 
against the sky. Often above them courses a 
flier of another sort, a scout aeroplane prob- 
ably, holding its way from the aviation fields 
in our rear, to the front. It rasps the heavens 
like a taut bow; by listening to the beat of 
its engines one can determine whether it be 
French or Boche. For Boche planes come 
over us frequently, on bombing raids; and 
sometimes one does not have to look or listen 



56 A Village in Picardy 

long to know that an air battle is taking place 
overhead. The sharp reports ; the white puffs 
of our guns, the black plumes of the enemy's; 
the glint of the sunlight on careening sails 
high up in the blue, — it all passes like a pano- 
rama, of which we do not know the end. 
Other sounds also are familiar to us on our 
plain, when from the Chemin des Dames, or 
St. Quentin, or Cambrai, the great guns boom. 
Like surges they shake and reverberate; and 
when, as often happens, the sea-fog rolls in 
from the Channel, one can well fancy them the 
breakers of a mighty storm. So they are, out 
there, on our front, where the living dyke of 
the poilus holds back the German flood. 

The highway and the railway, these are the 
two most coveted goals of the German bombs. 
For over them go up the trains of ammunition 
and of soldiers and supplies. Both we cross 
on the way to Canizy. The railroad, running 
between well defined hedges, would seem 
almost as conspicuous an object as the tree- 
sentinelled road. But, so far, both have es- 



O Crux, Ave 57 

caped harm. Trains whistle and puff as usual 
up and down from Amiens to Ham. Often 
I halt at the crossing, to wave to soldiers, who 
fill the cars; sometimes I pass through com- 
panies of red-turbaned, brown Moroccans, 
who are brought here by the Government to 
rebuild bridges and keep the roadbed in repair. 
Over the track the footpath carries one, on 
over brown stubble, to the Calvary and Canizy. 
As I have said, at the Cross one is awaited. 
Sometimes it is only one little figure in black 
apron and blue soldier's cap that stands beside 
it to give the signal; sometimes from the wall 
on the other side of the road, a half dozen girls 
start up, like a covey of quail. The boys 
usually ran away, but the girls advanced to 
surround one, and dance hand in hand down 
the street. But always before the Calvary 
there was a pause. Brown hands, none too 
clean, were raised to forehead and breast with 
the quick sign of the cross. One caught a 
whispered invocation. "But you do not do 
it," five-year-old Flore protested to me one 




mm. /£ e<S-t" duo- €j*\a#u)L \*\ + 

[He is big already! 
Well . . . he is as old as the war.] 



58 



O Crux, Ave 59 

day, with troubled eyes. "Why do you not 
salute the Calvary?'' "Teach me," I replied; 
and in chorus I learned the words which on 
the lips of the war-orphaned children are in- 
finitely pathetic: "Glory to the Father and to 
the Son and to the Holy Ghost." 

It is not alone at Canizy that one finds the 
Cross, though by its aloofness above the plain 
this one became impressive. By every road- 
side stands a Calvary, sometimes embowered 
in trees, but more often stark and naked, with 
the wantonly felled trunks about its base bear- 
ing mute witness to a desecration which re- 
spected the form, but not the spirit, of the 
Christ. At Hombleux, three such crucifixes 
marked the intersections of the village lanes, 
flanked by stenciled guide-posts: A Nesle, A 
Aihies, or A Roye. They cluster in the ceme- 
teries, above well-remembered graves; where 
even the dead no longer rest inviolate, since 
the Germans, to their unspeakable shame, have 
blasted open many a tomb. Day by day, the 



60 A Village in Picardy 

obsession grows on one that these uplifted 
symbols of suffering, stripped and mocked and 
defiled by the invader, typify the crucifixion of 
Picardy. 



CHAPTER V 



MME. GABRIELLE 



EVERY village, everywhere, has its 
stronger characters, to whom the com- 
munity looks up, perhaps unconsciously. 
Canizy, having been deprived of its normal 
leaders in the Cure, a prisoner, and the teacher, 
transferred to the school at Hombleux, looked 
up in this way to Mme. Lefevre and Mme. 
Gabrielle. The former was the especial friend 
of our medical department. In fact, she 
rented one of her two rooms for our use as a 
dispensary, and her flagged kitchen was 
always open to her neighbours and to us. 
Here I measured out milk to half the village, 
or distributed the loaves of bread which we 
ourselves purveyed from the crabbed Garde 
Champetre at Hombleux. Or, had I neither 
the time nor the patience, Mme. Lefevre her- 

61 



62 A Village in Picardy 

self made the distribution, and gave me a list 
of the recipients, and always the correct 
amount of neatly stacked coppers in change. 
A shrewd face had Mme. Lef evre, wrinkled by 
humour as well as by sorrow. She had been 
taken away by the Bodies in their retreat, but 
later, for some reason unknown, was allowed 
to return. Her three daughters, however, 
and her husband, all were in the hands of the 
enemy. She lived alone, therefore, and busied 
herself in her late-planted garden, and in her 
neighbours' affairs. 

Most of them, it seemed, were related to her 
in one way or another, all the Genses being of 
her kin. Of these there were Mme. Gense- 
Tabary, already mentioned, and her swarming 
family of eight, bright and pretty as pictures, 
and dirty as little pigs. She, lodged near the 
bank of the canal, really had no excuse for this 
chronic condition, and was encouraged to 
scrub by object lessons, clean clothing, and 
gifts even of long bars of savon marseilles. I 
remember her yet, two or three children tag- 



Mme. Gabrielle 63 

ging at her skirts, knocking at the door of my 
baraque of a Sunday morning, to tell me that 
she must have more soap. All the way from 
Canizy she had walked to get it; and she did 
not go back without. Mme. Gense-Tabary's 
eldest daughter, known as Germaine Tabary, 
was the sorrow of the village, even more than 
its daughters who had gone into captivity; for 
she had become an earlier victim of the in- 
vaders, and with her unborn baby was left 
behind. Mme. Marie Gense, another unfor- 
tunate, was a niece by marriage of Mme. 
Lefevre's. Her husband was a soldier. She 
had lived in a little cottage whose blue and 
white tiled floor I often had occasion to admire, 
next the church. But being left with two 
growing boys, and no resources, what was she 
to do? What she did was to add to her family 
a Paul, and one bitter winter night which our 
doctors and nurses well remember, a Paulette. 
"What would you?" she expostulated. "I 
had no bread for the children ; in this way they 
were fed." That two more mouths were 




[I didn't do it ... he did!] 



64 



Mme. Gabrielle 65 

added, and that her lean-to of ten feet by 
twelve could not accommodate them, were 
facts which did not seem to concern her. And 
of all good children, her two boys, Desire and 
Robert, were certainly the best. But Aunt 
Lefevre looked upon her niece's conduct as a 
scandal. She was forbidden the kitchen, and 
it was even known that the quarrel had come 
to the point of knives. With the children, 
that was different. "Yes," said Mme. Le- 
fevre on the arrival of the new baby, "Desire 
may sleep in the Dispensary if you so wish. It 
is your room; you pay for it." That Desire 
did, though I had a bed put up for him, I mis- 
doubt. But Robert, happy-go-lucky Robert, 
with his head cocked on one side and a smile 
rippling his brown eyes, even Aunt Lefevre 
could not help loving him. There was no 
question of his sleeping out, however, he being 
nurse to the babies and to his mother as well. 
Another wayward connection of Mme. Le- 
fevre's was a sister of Mme. Marie Gense's, 
known as Mme. Payelle. She had three chil- 



66 A Village in Picardy 

dren as cunning as you could wish to see, 
clean — as were Marie's — and sunny-tempered. 
Their parentage also was a mystery. But this 
blot did not rest by rights on the village escut- 
cheon. Mme. Payelle had been installed there 
by one of her admirers, a soldier en permission; 
she really did not belong to Canizy. 

To keep her social position in the midst of 
these misfortunes was a tribute to Mme. 
Lefevre's worth. She was always doing kind- 
nesses, and speaking to us on her neighbours' 
behalf. Beneath her shed stood one of the 
four chaudieres, or washing cauldrons, which 
survived the general destruction. These, 
varying in capacity from 50 to 250 litres, are 
an indispensable utensil of housekeeping in 
Picardy. In them, week by week, the soiled 
clothes are boiled. Not even the lack of a 
pump — and there was only one left in the vil- 
lage — was so much deplored as the loss of the 
cauldrons. In view of these two handicaps 
and the dearth of soap, the squalor of the vil- 
lage on our arrival seems excusable. Mme, 



Mme. Gabrielle 67 

Lef evre, at least, did her share toward remedy- 
ing it. Without charge, her chaudiere was in 
constant use, and her shed became a neighbour- 
hood rendezvous. 

It will be seen that all the Genses were by no 
means a bad lot, Mme. Lefevre being one her- 
self. Of an older generation, and I know not 
of what degree of kinship to her, is Mme. 
Helene Gense, grandmother to Mme. Gabri- 
elle, that energetic, substantial young widow, 
not Mme. Thuillard nor yet Veuve Thuillard, 
but Mme. Gabrielle to all Canizy. In pre- 
war times, she owned, through her parents and 
not by marriage, the most central homestead 
in the village. There remain now only the 
arched gate into the courtyard, the brick rabbit 
hutches, a heap of debris, and a tottering wall. 
She and ten-year-old Adrien lodge, therefore, 
in the first house on the left as you come past 
the Calvary, with Grand'mere Gense. This 
ell, flanked though it is by the ruin of the main 
building, is the most cheerful spot in the vil- 
lage. The narrow yard before the door is 



68 A Village in Picardy 

swept; a row of geraniums blossoms beneath 
the windows. Above all, there are windows, 
two of them, and curtains at each. Outside 
the door, if you are fortunate in the hour of 
your call, will stand two pairs of worn sabots. 
Or perhaps the door may be open, framing 
Grand'mere, bent almost at right angles, Mme. 
Gabrielle, and Bobbinot. Bobbinot is a dog, 
iron-grey, smooth-coated, with a white band 
on his breast and a white vest. He has no 
pedigree, his mistress assures me, but his brown 
eyes and his square, intelligent head bear out 
her statement that he is "tres loyal." All 
three welcome me ; a chair is proffered near the 
fire. Grand'mere sinks carefully into her low 
seat, Mme. Gabrielle sets on a saucepan of 
coffee, and we sit down to chat. 

It is a pleasure to look about as we talk. 
On the mantel, to give a note of colour, are laid 
a row of tiny yellow pumpkins; the floor is 
red, and through the window peer red gera- 
niums. In a cupboard beyond the stove is a 
modest array of pans and dishes. Two panes 



Mme. Gabrielle 69 

of glass, like portholes, pierce the wall to the 
rear. Beneath stands a sideboard, and a little 
to one side, a round table. Not until the 
coif ee was heated did I notice that cups were 
set for four. 

"But have you another guest?" I inquired, 
as Mme. Gabrielle poured first some syrup 
from a bottle, and then the steaming drink. 
" But no, only Adrien. Adrien, cornel" 
She raised her voice. Then for the first time 
I saw the boy, head propped on elbows, poring 
over a book. The mother regarded him indul- 
gently. "It is a pity for the children that we 
have no school. Adrien is apt ; when the Ger- 
mans were here, he understood everything, 
everything. And when the Scotch came, he 
learned, too. I myself try to learn English." 
She brought forth from the sideboard an Eng- 
lish-French phrase book. "This I found in a 
house after the English soldiers went away. 
It would be easy, but there is the pronuncia- 
tion." "I will teach you," I said, and we took 
up the words one by one, Grand'mere laughing 



70 A Village in Picardy 

the while, pleasant laughter, like a cracked, old 
bell. But the boy kept on reading and 
hummed a tune. "The children," broke in the 
mother, "they sing; it is well." But presently 
the boy shuts his book with a sigh and draws 
a chair to the table. "Did you like it, the 
story?" I inquire. "Yes, it tells of America." 
On the table, clear now save for Adrien's be- 
lated cup, is revealed an oilcloth map in lieu 
of a linen cover. "Where, then, is America?" 
His finger traces the colored squares. "Here 
is France, here England, here Italy, here Rus- 
sia, — but America, it is so far one cannot see 
it." "But yes," rejoins his mother, "so far 
that never in my life did I expect to see an 
American. Once in my childhood I remember 
looking at a picture of M. Pierpont's bank in 
New York — a great bank. But now I have 
seen Germans, Russians, English, Moroccans, 
— and you. The war teaches many things." 

"You have seen Russians?" 

"Very many; the Germans worked our fields 
with Russian prisoners. A strange people! 



Mme. Gabrielle 71 

You and I converse; we come from different 
countries, but we have ideas in common. The 
Russians were like dumb beasts; they had no 
esprit de corps" 

"It is the fault of their government," I 
venture. 

"Yes," she replied, "France and America 
are republics. It is not that our government 
is perfect. There are many beautiful things 
in France, but there is much injustice also, 
much." 

I knew of what Mme. Gabrielle was think- 
ing, then; of the wheatlands of Canizy, where 
not one furrow had been turned for the next 
year's harvest, while the grands cultivateurs 
and the petty politicians looked out for them- 
selves; and of the school building, long prom- 
ised and still delayed. 

But Mme. Gabrielle looked beyond the con- 
fines of her small village and its grievances. 
Love for la belle plaine and la belle France, 
unreasoning, passionate, pulsed in her. Ha- 
tred of the Germans was its corollary. 



72 A Village in Picardy 

"Mademoiselle, during the occupation, we were 
prisoners," she said. "We had to have passes 
to go one fourth of a kilometre from our vil- 
lage. My mother was sick at Voyennes, — and 
I could not go to see her." It came out that 
Bobbinot had been her constant companion. 
"But I should think," I said, "that the Ger- 
mans would have taken him away." "They 
dared not; he would have bitten them!" was 
the spirited response. 

At Mme. Gabrielle's table, with the map 
upon it, I was destined to sit often, sometimes 
for luncheon and sometimes for dinner, while 
we took counsel over village affairs. For 
Mme. Gabrielle, together with Mme. Lefevre, 
and the former school teacher, became an in- 
formal advisory committee to me. Through 
punctiliously served courses of soup, stew, 
salad, wine, cheese and coffee, Mme. Gabrielle 
offered her information, or, when asked, her 
opinion. It was she who reassured me on the 
point of selling rather than of giving the 
smaller articles we distributed. "I under- 



Mme. Gabrielle 73 

stand completely; it is better for us. The 
American Red Cross did the same when 
the Germans were here. They sold the food, 
but very cheap. Without their help, we 
should have starved. We are grateful to 
America, which saved our lives." It was she 
who advised in regard to a baby whom its half- 
witted mother had placed in a creche: "For 
the mother," she said, "it would doubtless be 
better that the child returned. But for the 
child — and I am a mother myself who speak 
— let it remain." On the good sense and the 
good heart of Mme. Gabrielle one came to rely. 
Even as far as Hombleux she was known and 
respected. "O yes," the women there told me, 
"Mme. Gabrielle, we know her. She is une 
femme ires forte" 



CHAPTER VI 



VOILA LA MISERE 



T^IRECTLY opposite Mme, Gabrielle 
-*—' lives Mme. Odille Delorme. One lifts 
the latch of a heavy wooden gate to enter her 
courtyard. On left and right are the remains 
of barn and stable, from the rafters of which 
depend bundles of haricots hung to dry. A 
half dozen chickens scurry from under foot, 
and at the commotion Mme. Delorme steps 
out. "I have come to make a little visit," I 
begin. "Enter then, and see misery," is her 
reply. It is a startling reply from this woman, 
strong, intelligent, and direct. The room of 
which she throws open the door is tiny; the 
floor is of earth ; there is no window, only a hole 
covered with oiled linen, which lets in a ray of 
light but never any sun. A stove, a table, two 
stools, a shelf or two and a few dishes hung on 

74 



yoila la Misere 75 

nails are her furnishings. In her arms she 
holds her sixteen-months' baby; a little girl 
of three comes running in from an adjoining 
alcove, and is followed presently by her seven- 
year-old sister, Charmette. The three children 
look like plants blanched in a cellar. As 
gently as possible, I proceed with necessary 
questions : for in social parlance, I am making 
a preliminary survey of the family needs. 
"Your husband?" I inquire. She turns to her 
little girl, "Marie, tell the lady, then, where 
is Papa." And Marie, smiling up into her 
mother's face, repeats her lesson proudly, 
"Amc — les — Bodies" "Avec les Bodies" re- 
iterates the mother, and catches the child to her 
in a passionate embrace. There is a pause be- 
fore I can continue. "Have you beds and cov- 
ers?" "See for yourself, Mademoiselle," and 
she leads the way through her menage; three 
passage-ways opening the one into the other, 
like the compartments of a train. The first 
contains a child's bed of white enamel, and be- 
neath an aperture like that in the outer room, 



76 A Village in Picardy 

a crib. Both are canopied and ruffled in spot- 
less white. "Yes," Mme. Delorme says in an- 
swer to my unspoken surprise, "I bought these 
beds. The ruffles are made of sheets, one can 
but do one's best. As you see, it is only a 
chicken-house after all." Beyond, quite with- 
out light, is a space occupied by her own bed, 
a springless frame of planks. From nails in 
the walls clothes of all sizes and descriptions 
hang. In fact, one wonders at the amount of 
clothing saved by the panic-stricken peasants 
in their flight. They not only took away with 
them heavy sacks made out of sheets, but bur- 
ied what they had time to. Of course, some of 
their hiding places were rifled ; but most of the 
villagers have a real embarrassment of riches 
in their old clothes. Their first request is 
usually for a wardrobe, so that the mice will 
not nest in them. 

But Mme. Delorme asked for nothing. She 
rested her case in the simple statement, "Voila 
la misere." At a later date, when I returned 
with a camera, she repeated, "What would 



Voila la Misere 77 

you? Take a picture of our misery?" "Yes, 
Madame, to carry with me to America, that 
they may see it there and fight the harder for 
knowing what the Boches have done." "Eh, 
bienr she replied, and the picture was taken. 
Framed in the deep gateway, from which the 
clusters of dried beans depend like a stage cur- 
tain, her baby in her arms, her two little girls 
clinging beside her, and neighbourly Adrien, 
broom in hand, sweeping the light snow from 
the path, — I see her yet amid the ruins, brave, 
broken-hearted Odille Delorme. 

Before the war, Mme. Delorme had not the 
social position of her neighbour, Mme. Ga- 
brielle. She lived on her smaller property, 
and attended to her truck garden and her 
poultry yard and her children, while her hus- 
band served the Government as bargeman on 
the canal. Yet the two were close friends. 
Mme. Gabrielle having bought a cow, shared 
the milk with Mme. Delorme. Mme. Gabri- 
elle told me that Mme. Delorme needed blan- 
kets. "She would never admit it," she ex- 



78 A Village in Picardy 

plained. "We are not used to accepting 
gifts, you see." Or were it necessary for 
Mme. Delorme to go to Ham perhaps for her 
allocation, Mme. Gabrielle transferred the 
baby and Marie to her kitchen until their moth- 
er's return. 

From this extreme end of the village, by the 
Calvary, the street continues across the rail- 
road track. Here, on almost any day, chil- 
dren may be seen digging miniature coal mines. 
They do it not in play, but in earnest. The 
ties which the Germans left have long since 
been used as fuel, but in the roadbed the vil- 
lager still finds a scant supply of coal. Be- 
yond the track, the first habitable building is a 
barn. Its interior consists of one room, 
earthen-floored where two makeshift beds al- 
low it to be seen. In one corner stands a small 
stove. No light enters except from the open 
door. Here lodge the old mother, the mar- 
ried daughter, two children, a girl of seven- 
teen and a boy of eleven, and their orphaned 
cousin, four-year-old Noel. Lydie, capable, 



Voila la Misere 79 

red-cheeked, crisp-haired, welcomes us and 
pulls forward a bench. "Be seated, please." 
Her voice has a ring of youth, her mouth a 
ready smile. One wonders how it can be, yet 
it is so. The grandmother complains queru- 
lously from the untidy bed where she is lying 
to keep warm. Lydie tells us with perfect 
equanimity that she herself has no bed. Where 
does she sleep? On the bench. Beds would 
be welcome, yes, and sheets and blankets. The 
grandmother adds a request for warm slippers ; 
her feet are so often cold. A pane of glass 
for the door I set down also in the list in my 
notebook, and as assets — the furniture being 
negligible — 300 kilos of cabbages, 100 kilos of 
potatoes, leeks and chicory in smaller quan- 
tities. 

My next call I have been urged to make by 
our doctors. Here in a ramshackle ell, facing 
a court deep in mire, live the poorest family 
in the village, comprising Mme. Laure Ta- 
bary, her six children, and a black and bearded 
goat. The goat inhabits a rabbit hutch from 




[Once, before the war, the pralines were two for a sou.] 



80 



Voila la Misere 81 

which her tether allows her the freedom of the 
narrow brick path. From the sidelong gleam 
in her eyes, one always expects an attack in the 
flank or rear. But Madame, her mistress, re- 
gards her as a pet; perhaps because she can- 
not regard her in any other favourable light, 
— since la petite gives no milk. Once past the 
goat, the door is quickly gained. Two rooms 
has Mme. Tabary, and a loft and a shed. She 
needs them! From forlorn Olga to forlorn 
Andrea, the girls of the family descend in 
graduated wrappings of rags. "O, Mme. 
Tabary," exclaimed the school teacher, with 
whom I discussed the all too evident need of 
soap, and of clothing, "she is a very worthy 
woman, but she is always poor." Always poor, 
always ailing, yet always humorous, were the 
Laure Tabarys. Did the unfortunate woman 
try to boil her washing, the stove must needs 
break, and the cauldron full of scalding water 
descend upon Madeleine. No sooner were her 
wounds dressed than Andrea developed a 
fever. It would be interesting to know how 



82 A Village in Picardy 

many litres of gasoline were consumed by us 
in the carrying of Mme. Tabary's children to 
and from hospitals located ten and twenty 
miles away. One would have thought the dis- 
tracted mother might welcome these deporta- 
tions. But, naturally enough, she distrusted 
them, and having faithfully promised to give 
up the baby to our care on a certain day, left 
instead for Ham. Of how she was won over, 
— that is a tale which belongs to the annals of 
the medical department rather than to me. But 
I have heard rumours of hair ribbons and dolls 
and candy and fairy stories and I know not 
what of similar remedies which Hippocrates 
and Galen never mentioned. Judge, then, 
whether our doctors were bugbears or no 
among the children of our villages ! 

But the ell housed another family besides 
the Tabarys. Across the hall lodged the 
Moroys; M. Edouard, an old man of eighty- 
four, his niece and nephew and his grand- 
daughter, Mile. Suzanne. All lived in the one 
room. It was a room with only three corners 



Voila la Misere 83 

as well, because in the fourth the floor rose in 
an arch which indicated the cellar-way. In 
this room were three beds, a table, a stove, 
three chairs and a broken sewing machine. Yet 
I never saw the room in disorder, nor heard 
any requests from the family beyond that of a 
little sugar for Grandpere, and, if possible, an- 
other bed, so that Charles might have a place 
to sleep. Meantime, Charles slept upon the 
floor. In this room were two windows. The 
one to the south interested me by chance, be- 
cause the panes looked so clear. I stepped 
over and put out my hand. It went straight 
through the framework; there was no glass. 
"But you must be cold!" I exclaimed, know- 
ing well the common fear of courants dfair. 
Besides, it was late October, and the nights 
were already frosty. "Yes, a little," Mile. 
Suzanne admitted in a matter of fact way. 
"Yes," agreed her aunt, in a more positive tone. 
"And besides, Mademoiselle, our stove is too 
small, as you see. In fact, it is not ours, but 
belongs to Mme, Tabary. But she has so large 



84 A Village in Picardy 

a family, we made an exchange. Perhaps 

when you distribute stoves " I promise to 

remember, wondering the while if we in like 
circumstances would share our last crusts with 
like generosity. For the window, so scarce was 
glass, oiled linen was the best that could be 
done, a pity considering that it excluded the 
sun with the cold. 

Mile. Suzanne, with the exception of Ger- 
maine Tabary and Lydie Cerf, is the only 
young woman in Canizy. She had been taken 
captive by the Germans, but was allowed to 
return. Her family, however, met an un- 
known fate; father and brother, they were 
avec les Bodies. A curious circumstance in 
this connection was that Suzanne, having been 
an independent worker, received no pension 
for her loss. She, too, seemed a Good Samari- 
tan to her neighbours — lame Mme. Juliette 
depends on Suzanne to bring her her pitcher 
of milk ; Mme. Musqua, sick and irresponsible, 
has only to send over her children to Mile. 
Suzanne to be cared for, — what matter two 



Voila la Misere 85 

more or less in the crowded room? I added 
my quota to her labours by asking her to take 
charge of washing rags, and started her in with 
those of her next-door neighbour, Mme. Ta- 
bary. For the purpose, I have given her a 
cylindrical boiler, standing three feet high. 
This, when not in use, is placed over by the 
cellar-way. On washing days, it is set on an 
open fire in the court, where Grandpere feeds 
it with labouriously chopped twigs. Mean- 
time, back of the house, patches of colour and 
of flapping white begin to adorn the wire fence. 
Suzanne also sews, by hand and, now that its 
frame is mended by I know not how many 
screws in the warped wood, by machine. We 
give out the sewing, and she earns by it perhaps 
three francs a week. 

Beyond the Moroys, lives Mme. Thuillard, 
Charles, as the neighbours call her to distin- 
guish her from the Thuillards, O. I have sel- 
dom found this energetic lady at home, but I 
often see her, and sometimes hear her, as she 
passes with firm step down the street to work 



86 A Village in Picardy 

in her garden. When not playing, her ten- 
year-old granddaughter Orelie follows in her 
wake. This leaves in the unlighted recesses 
of the barn, her husband, M. Charles. He 
seems an apologetic and conciliatory soul, 
with whom I discuss domestic needs, such as a 
window, a lamp, and sheets for the beds. He 
will tell his wife what I say and report to-mor- 
row when he comes for the milk. It is in his 
entrance-way, so to speak, that I first noticed 
a pile of willow-withed market baskets. "O, 
yes," he said, "I had hundreds of such, but the 
Boches took them." "Are they then made 
hereabouts?" "Before the war; but now no 
one is left who understands the trade." The 
next day I am likely to get a report, and a 
sharp one, from Madame, his wife. "Sheets," 
she queries, "what sort of sheets? Are they 
linen sheets? Blankets. Are they wool? Are 
they white? Look you, before the war, I had 
five dozen linen sheets and plenty of blankets 
and down quilts of the finest quality. Keep 
your gifts about which you make so much talk! 



Voila la Misere 87 

I will have none of them, none of them at all!" 
I have sometimes wondered if Madame were 
related to the contrary-minded but equally in- 
dependent wife of the garde champetre who 
distributes — or not — at her pleasure, the com- 
munal supply of bread. "I hear," she began 
one day, as I waited for change for a hundred 
franc note — change which came in gold, by the 
way, as well as in silver — "I hear that you are 
to make a distribution of gifts. Do not for- 
get me! I will receive anything, but you un- 
derstand, not for payment; only as a present. 
Behold," this with a playful slap on the shoul- 
der, "any one will tell you that I have a tongue. 
O, la, la, la!" 



CHAPTER VII 



NOUS SOMMES DIX 



T T was at Christmas time that we came most 
•*■ to realise the broken family circles in all 
our villages. There was not one household 
which did not have some hostage avec les 
Bodies. Of the pitiful remnant, the old men 
— there were no young ones — were to me the 
most appealing. I shall never forget the fete 
in the hill village of Douilly, well up to the 
front, a village completely destroyed, whose 
inhabitants were living in cellars. On the brow 
of the hill, facing the sunset, stood the white 
stone church. It had been used by the Ger- 
mans as a barracks, and had not been reconse- 
crated, so that we were given permission to 
hold our party there. Cold, bare, yet beau- 
tiful with the sunlight falling in rainbow col- 
ours on the groined arches, was the old church. 



Nous Sommes Dix 89 

At the bases of the pillars, we deposited our 
sacks of presents; most of them for the chil- 
dren, but one each for the women and the men. 
The latter were in my charge. Only three 
came hobbling up from the outskirts of the 
crowd. "But is this all?" I asked, as they chose 
the size of package which seemed to each most 
desirable. "Are there no other men in the 
village?" The old men consulted together. 
"There is Grandpere Cordon," suggested one, 
"and Jean, who has rheumatism," "and blind 

Pierre " "Nous sommes dioc" came the 

answer, finally. "Shall we take the presents 
to the rest?" 

"Nous sommes dixl" It was the answer 
which might have been made in Canizy. Ac- 
cording to the number of inhabitants, it might 
represent the proportion of the male popula- 
tion left anywhere in the region devastee. Not 
one was able-bodied. In Canizy there were, 
for example, the lame mayor of whom I have 
spoken; his four contemporaries, verging on 
sixty, one a heavy drinker, another one-armed, 



90 A Village in Picardy 

a third in need of an operation, a fourth suf- 
fering from heart disease. Even the latter had 
been taken away, but as he said, when the Ger- 
man doctor put down his ear to listen, he threw 
up his hands, and gave the officers a good piece 
of his mind for having imported a useless con- 
sumer of food. So he was encouraged to make 
his way back. 

Of an older generation are two of the servi- 
tors of the Chateau, the one the feeble gar- 
dener, the other the bedridden husband of the 
laundress, who has not worked for many years. 
There is M. Tabary also, the grandfather of 
Germaine, who has his own peculiar sorrow in 
his granddaughter's visible disgrace. A Boche 
baby will never outlive its stigma while the 
memory of the Great War remains. M. Ta- 
bary is sick and frail. It was he who, per- 
suaded at last to come to the Dispensary, 
paused in going out to doff his old cap with a 
courtly bow and to address the doctors with a 
"Mercij mes demoiselles, merci; je suis con- 
tent/' 



Nous Sommes Dix 91 

It was a fortunate circumstance, however, 
— for I cannot think it intentional on the part 
of the Germans — that all of these old men, 
more or less in need of care, had either wives 
or other feminine relatives to give it to them. 
Not so circumstanced was M. Augustin. 
Smooth-shaven save for a white fringe of 
beard, his fresh-coloured but anxious face 
appeared one day at the Chateau. Thither 
he had gone to deliver a load of hay. But the 
particular lady who had contracted to buy it 
being unexpectedly absent, M. Augustin was 
disturbed. His language gave one an impres- 
sion of vigour which was borne out by subse- 
quent acquaintance. On the saint's day of the 
village, he shared honours with young Lydie 
in being the life of the party, by contributing a 
song and a quaint peasants' dance. He was 
to be met with frequently along the roads, with 
blue-visored cap, brown corduroys and stout 
cane. As his neighbours said : "M. Augustin, 
il voyage toujours partoutf Still, he took 
time to do chores, like chopping wood for Mme. 



92 A Village in Picardy 

Juliette, to hoe in his garden, and to keep his 
house. The latter was, strictly speaking, a 
shed. It had two windows, however, through 
which, in the absence of the owner, I made in- 
ventory. A broken stove was propped against 
a home-made chimney ; a plank table stood be- 
neath the window; a chair, and a rough chest 
completed the furniture. On the table, in- 
stead of a lamp, was a bottle containing a can- 
dle ; beside it were a bowl and a frying pan. 

Chiefly from the neighbours, I learned that 
M. Augustin was a widower, that he had been 
the village cobbler, and that he preferred to 
live alone. Now, we had shoe-making tools 
among our stores, so one day I asked him if 
he would not like some. "No, Mademoiselle, 
I thank you," he replied. "My eyes are no 
longer clear; I cannot see well." I was more 
successful with other suggestions, however. A 
little nest of dishes pleased him greatly ; a new 
stove was installed, and a bed, and what was 
perhaps even more greatly appreciated, a 
lamp. The evidence of his appreciation took 



Nous Sommes Dix 93 

the form of whitewash on walls and ceiling; 
the cobwebs vanished from the windows; and 
a shelf appeared for the dishes behind the stove. 
It may be that M. Augustin will now be more 
content with his own fireside, and less drawn 
to visit the wineshops of Ham and Nesle. 

I never saw M. Augustin at mass, where the 
village transformed itself on occasion from 
weekday caps and kerchiefs and sabots to its 
conventional and unbecoming best. Therefore 
I must needs infer that his face was shaven 
daily, and his suit always clean, for his own sat- 
isfaction. The moral stamina shown by this is 
noteworthy, and characteristic of the peas- 
antry of our district. We ourselves in our liv- 
ing conditions found cleanliness next to godli- 
ness in this respect at least, in that it was hard 
to attain. But cut bono seemed never to have 
disturbed the habits of M. Augustin. 

Another sprightly old gentleman was M. 
Touret. His quarters were more spacious 
than those of his neighbour, for he lived in a 
barn. Overhead, hay piled from eaves to roof- 



94 A Village in Picardy 

tree helped to keep out the cold, and there was 
one window. As he himself said when asked 
if he wanted anything: "What would you? 
I am warm ; I have a chair, a stove and a bed. 
If the young people were here — perhaps. But 
we who are old, we shall not live long, we have 
enough." M. Touret, however, did not live 
alone. The mother of his son's wife had taken 
pity on him after the Germans deported his two 
sons and their families, and had invited him 
to share her barn. There were three housed 
there altogether, for with them lived her son. 
M. Touret was oftenest found on a bench be- 
tween the window and the stove, poring 
through his spectacles over the daily paper. 
Mme. Clara was usually busy with some 
savoury cooking, and M. Albert on the oc- 
casion of my first visit held the centre of the 
floor with saw-horse and axe. A chair was of- 
fered at once, and we all sat down to talk. M. 
Touret, however, kept glancing at his paper, 
or regarded us over the rims of his spectacles. 
Presently he broke in: "As for you, I do not 



Nous Sommes Dix 95 

know what you may be, but as for me, I am a 
Christian." In the midst of a conversation 
about fodder and furniture, the effect was ar- 
resting, until one realised from his point of 
view the strangeness of our position. What, 
he must have queried, are these young Amer- 
ican women doing here? We were certainly 
different from the French ladies of family who 
nursed the soldiers, or took over whole com- 
munities to house and feed. French women 
would never have walked as we did, muddy- 
shoed and knapsacked, alone over the fields, 
They might have been more understanding, 
at least their ways would have been more con- 
ventional and better understood. 

In fact, on another occasion M. Touret 
asked me why I had come to France. "Mon- 
sieur, my father was a soldier; I cannot fight, 
but in this war I, too, want to help." "Your 
father was a soldier? Ah yes, that would be in 
the Civil War, in '64 — I remember it well. 
And what rank did he hold? Was he a gen- 
eral?" "But no, Monsieur; only a common 



96 A Village in Picardy 

soldier." "A common soldier?" He thought 
a moment. "But not like ours, because in 
America you are not a military nation, and de- 
pend on volunteers." My face must have ex- 
pressed astonishment. "Look you, Mademoi- 
selle; before the war it was my habit to read. 
I read every year as many as two hundred 
volumes. I had a large library in a cabinet. 
The Germans burned my books." He rose, 
picked up something from a bench behind the 
stove and handed it to me. It proved to be a 
charred and mildewed copy of a history; the 
history of England in the time of Henry the 
Eighth. Mutilated as it was, the pages 
showed a beautiful clear type and exquisite 
engravings. It was a good example of the 
printing of Abbeville, famous for its engrav- 
ers and binders since the days of its first print- 
ing press in 1484. 

"Would you not like some books, then?" I 
ventured. 

"What sort of books? Not magazines." He 
looked contemptuously at one that I had in 



Nous Sommes Dix 97 

my hand. "Me, I like stories. See what I 
bought yesterday." He brought from a chest 
of drawers a gaudy paper volume entitled "La 
Morte d'Amour." 

Knowing that our library contained no such 
light literature, I continued, "Would you per- 
haps like Dumas?" 

"Dumas? 'The Three Musketeers'?" His 
wrinkled face lighted. "I know them. An- 
other book I liked the Germans loaned me when 
they were here. It was by an Englishman — 
B-u-1-w-e-a-r — 'The Last Days of Pompeii' — 
a very interesting book." 

"Tell me," he went on a little later, "some 
one has said that you have no twilight in North 
America. Is it true?" 

It seeming in his mind to be a reflection upon 
our country, I tried my best to dissipate this 
impression by citing the great size of the 
United States, and its varying climatic condi- 
tions. But I could not truthfully say that we 
had the lingering orange sunsets and after- 
glows of pink and mauve and applegreen 



98 A Village in Picardy 

which I knew were in his mind, and with which 
I too became familiar on the plain of Picardy. 

The last time I saw M. Touret was on a 
white and wintry morning when I had risen 
even earlier than the villagers or M. the chap- 
lain, to attend the village mass. In a golden- 
brown corduroy which might have been the 
twin of M. Augustin's, I spied M. Touret on 
the path ahead of me, homeward bound after 
the service. I ran to catch up. 

*'Good morning, Monsieur, and how are 
you?" 

"O, doucement, doucement" he answered. 
"And you?" 

"The books, did you like them?" I inquired, 
for his Christmas present had consisted of 
three. 

"O, well enough; but one was not true. It 
was called 'Contes de la Lune.' I did not read 
it. Another (this in reference to Tourguen- 
ieff ) was by a Russian; and you know well, in 
France we do not love Russia now, A Rus- 



Nous Sommes Dix 99 

sian indeed! The third, — well Jules Verne is 
always interesting. Qa ira. 33 

Somewhat discouraged, I recalled what 
Mme. Clara had told me once in an effort to 
soften the old man's brusqueness. "He is old; 
he is full of crotchets, you understand." But 
Madame herself appeared to me to be quite as 
old, though I had the wit not to compliment 
her politeness thus maladroitly. Perhaps it 
was because of this honesty, entirely unaf- 
fected, that of all the households in my village, 
I enjoyed most hers and M. Touret's. There 
one found a freeborn fellowship, which, like 
the mellow twilight, belongs to Picardy. It 
is a timbre resonant in the older generation; 
that generation which endured the invasion of 
1870, as well as the invasion of 1914. It is a 
survival of many wars, of many hardships, a 
spirit akin to that fortitude which has made our 
own country, — a common language that we, 
who came from the ends of the earth, could 
understand. 



CHAPTER VIII 

TJNE DISTRIBUTION DE DONS 

AT length, the survey of Canizy was com- 
pleted: its crooked streets traced on a 
map, its houses numbered, and the pre-war 
and the post-war status of each of its families 
noted thereon. But long before these facts 
had been collected, the articles found to be 
most necessary had been bought for the homes. 
It only remained to wait their arrival. Even 
the number of sheets and blankets in each 
household was listed, and against them, the 
number to be given out. The honesty and 
unselfishness of most of the villagers in setting 
down their needs, was a constant joy. There 
was Mme. Regina, for instance, who had five 
pairs of stout linen sheets and four soldiers' 
blankets on two Boche beds. I proposed a 

new bed for the baby, and covers to go with 

100 



Une Distribution De Dons 101 

it. Mme. Regina acquiesced at first, but later 
drew me aside: "I can get along," she said, 
"I know you have not enough to go around, — 
and when one is so poorly lodged anyway, it 
does not matter. When I get my baraque, 
then I will come to you." 

There was good sense in Mme. Regina's de- 
cision. The housing rested not with us, but 
with the Government, through the mayor of 
the commune. Long delay ensued in Canizy, 
when ten families had applied, and only three 
baraques had been set up. Of these, two were 
for the domestics of M. Lanne. Mme. 
Picard and the Mayor himself were among 
the waiting; nor could one decide which was 
the more miserably off. Even Mme. Picard's 
vegetables were comfortably bedded compared 
with her children, in her dark and windy barn, 
and as for M. le Maire, a water-spout built 
within his hut carried the rain from his bed. 
But at last one day, loads of baraques began 
to arrive, and red-fezzed Moroccans, to erect 
them. There were five shacks in all, and four, 



102 A Village in Picardy 

it transpired, were for Mme. Picard and M. 
Thuillard. I could understand that Mme. 
Picard had need of her two apartments, but 
the Mayor, — well, he wished to reopen his 
store. And his wife, all smiles at their pros- 
pective installation, offered me myself a guest 
room so that I could live in my village at last. 
But this offer was tendered before the distri- 
bution of gifts. 

It was Dave, or strictly speaking, the Red 
Cross, which made possible an early allotment 
of blankets and sheets in Canizy. Though 
they had been overturned in the mud, even 
Mme. la Maire did not complain of their con- 
dition. "It matters nothing; they can be 
washed," she said. On the day we had chosen, 
word was passed to each family that a distri- 
bution would be made at Mme. Lefevre's at 
four that afternoon. There was no need of a 
garde champ etre such as they had in Esmery- 
Halion to cry the news. The children flew 
with it; the mothers halted at the corners to 
talk about it; and at four o'clock, when the 



Une Distribution De Dons 103 

jitney drove in with its wonderful cargo, a 
line like a bread-line had formed in front of 
the door. Mme. Lefevre herself came out to 
help us ; the older boys lent a hand, and within 
five minutes, piles of single blankets and 
double blankets, and single sheets and double 
sheets, were ready to be given out. Then a 
window was opened and the names were called. 
"Mme. Carlier: 6 blankets; 3 single sheets; 3 
double sheets." "Mme. Lecart: 3 double 
sheets, 2 blankets." So ran the list. One after 
another the mothers stepped forward, received 
their quota and went away. There were order, 
good nature, and no unkind comment. Even 
afterwards, there seemed to be little dissatis- 
faction. The distribution had been made, as 
every one knew, on the basis of actual need, 
and the result was accepted as just. If Mme. 
Lefevre had only one blanket, that was be- 
cause she had plenty of linen sheets, much bet- 
ter than the cotton ones we gave, a woollen 
blanket, and a warm red eiderdown quilt. 
Only the mayor's wife and that very human 



104 A Village in Picardy 

lady, Mme. Charles Thuillard, of whom I have 
before spoken, raised protesting voices, — but 
such was their bent. 

Our first distribution having gone so well, 
and we being still received as friends, we pro- 
ceeded to the second, which consisted of cast- 
iron beds and stoves. The single beds we had 
been fortunate enough to buy ourselves; but 
the double beds and the stoves came from M. 
le Sous-Prefet and were signed for by the 
recipients as a part of their indemnite de 
guerre. Heavy loads these articles made, 
and Dave and his truck were requisitioned for 
the day. We first had to secure the double 
beds, which were stored, together with other 
civilian supplies, at the Moroccan camp at 
INTesle. To Nesle, then, we tore, coasting the 
long hills, and chugging up the inclines as if 
the Germans themselves were in pursuit. Ar- 
rived at the camp, we found that we had not 
made the proper entry, and must reverse, 
disentangle ourselves from the railroad em- 
bankment, plough through mud to the axles, 



Une Distribution De Dons 105 

and back up to the warehouse at the other end 
of the yard. All this Dave did. Bedsteads, 
mattresses and bolsters were then piled aboard. 
Dave and one of my comrades precariously 
balanced on the front seat, and I high on the 
load, expecting a landslide every minute, we 
steamed away for Canizy. A house to house 
visitation with a truck down its narrow and 
uneven streets was also an adventure, and we 
were thankful enough when the day ended 
with only minor injuries, and every family that 
needed them supplied with beds. Stoves were 
simpler, for the reason that they were smaller. 
Wardrobes, buffets, chairs and tables would 
have followed, could we have secured them. 
But these, even when I left, had not yet been 
crossed off the village lists. 

Failing to obtain furniture, we distributed 
clothing, for by this time the winter was well 
upon us. Individual families had been taken 
care of before as the need arose. In order 
not to pauperize, or hurt the genuine self- 
respect of the people, I tried a plan known by 



io6 A Village in Picardy 

them as "an arrangement/' whereby I took 
vegetables, or rags, in exchange. This system 
of barter was also one of cooperation with our 
travelling store, which supplied the wants of 
families able — and glad — to buy. The coming 
of the store made a red-letter day, like a mar- 
ket-day, in the village. Even the soldiers gath- 
ered around, commenting humorously on the 
bargains, and urging the ladies to buy. They 
asked on their own part for mufflers or sabots 
or cigarettes. Once a small tradesman, trans- 
formed by his uniform in appearance but not 
in nature, wondered audibly how long we 
thought we could remain in business and lose 
in each purchase from a third to a half of its 
value. Our storekeeper laughed. "Toujours, 
M. Soldat," she answered, and forthwith be- 
guiled a hesitant grandmother into buying 
an entire bar of laundry soap at four francs 
instead of twelve. 

But our "arrangements" did not lack hu- 
mour or interest. There was Mme, Laure, for 
example, who was purposely absent when we 



JJne Distribution De Dons 107 

brought the new clothing for her family, and 
undressed and bathed it and filled the boiler in 
turn with what we had taken off; and Mme. 
Gense-Tabary who conspired with her husband 
to get vegetables in Ham and resell to us at 
a higher price in payment for her dozens of 
new garments, and Mme. Payell who, hearing 
a rumour that we were about to outfit her 
babies, bought extra buttons to have them 
ready to sew on. There was also conscientious 
Mme. Regina, with her box of clean rags all 
ready for the new suit we gave fifteen-year-old 
Raymond. 

The purpose of the rag industry was two- 
fold: to clear the cluttered interiors, and with 
the rags themselves to make rag rugs. After 
Mile. Suzanne's washing, the clean pieces went 
to a class of three young girls, who met once a 
week, divided the stock, and sewed and braided 
the strands. To them went also the snippings 
of the hundreds of garments we cut and let 
out through the district to be sewed. A pretty 
picture my girls made of a Tuesday afternoon 



io8 A Village in Picardy 

around the big table in Mme. Noulin's store; 
Elmire fair and delicate as a lily, Albertine 
black-haired and black-eyed, and quick, grace- 
ful, thirteen-year-old Cecile. Fingers and 
tongues were busy. Mme. Noulin herself 
bustled in and out, and finally served us 
with the inevitable coffee. This ceremony 
concluded the lesson. But the yards of 
braiding grew week by week, — though not 
without some small heart-burning and rivalry. 
"Cecile," Elmire complained, "takes all the 
longer pieces and gives me only the scraps. 
Perhaps Mademoiselle would speak to her." 
But it was the Government which unintention- 
ally interfered most with my rags. I had 
bespoken the mayor's hut for our headquarters 
as soon as he was ready to move out. Only a 
few feet from the best well, where we planned 
to install our new pump and our village chau- 
diere, it was to be a centre of neighbourhood 
industry. But the mayor still waits on op- 
portunity and the rags still wait in sacks. 
As winter advanced, it became obvious, even 



Une Distribution De Dons 109 

at mass, that Canizy went cold. The children's 
noses and mittenless hands were red. True, 
there was Mme. Gabrielle, who came in furs 
and smart black hats ; and several other ladies 
sufficiently warm if rather rusty and old- 
fashioned. But one noted among the children 
an absolute lack of the capes which are the 
characteristic dress of French school children. 
Throats wrapped in mufflers, hands thrust 
into pockets or skirts, — this was their method 
of keeping warm. The older boys especially 
looked pinched in trousers which had become 
too short, and tightly buttoned, threadbare 
coats. One day, when a biting wind and a 
powdery snow impressed their discomfort upon 
me, I made a raid on our storeroom, with the 
entire permission of my colleague in charge. 
Woollen shirts, stockings, caps, overcoats 
and suits, whatever article of warmth I could 
find, I gathered up. The roads were too 
drifted for the truck, or for walking, but I 
had asked for the horse and wagon. Carlos, 
our soldier, helped me pack my plunder, and 



no A Village in Picardy 

convoyed me on my way. But a difficult way 
it proved to be, and it was not until nearly 
twilight that we drew up at Mme. Lefevre's 
door, too late to distribute that night. I left 
the warm clothing in her care, asking her at the 
same time to make me a list of those to whom 
she thought it ought to go, and promising to 
return the following day. But Mme. Lefevre's 
enthusiasm exceeded her instructions. When I 
came, she met me with a triumphant smile. "I 
knew, Mademoiselle, that it would please you 
were the clothes on the backs of the poor chil- 
dren. Voila, I have given the clothing accord- 
ing to the list." A cramped and illiterate list 
it was she handed me, devoid of capitals, but 
it accounted for every article, even to a boy's 
coat given to Lydie Cerf. "Lydie?" I queried 
mentally, yet not for the world would I have 
questioned or criticised good Mme. Lefevre. 
Lydie herself I did question. "But, yes, 
Mademoiselle," she replied, "I am keeping the 
coat for Papa. He is with the Boches. It will 
be ready for him when he returns." 



Une Distribution De Dons in 

When they return ! It was a phrase on every 
lip. "If the children were here, it would be 
different." "No, I do not wish to touch my 
indemnity. I and my wife, we are saving it 
for the boys when they come home." "Made- 
moiselle, I need another bed." "But you have 
two." "Yes, but there is my mother, who may 
return any day." So ran the undercurrent of 
longing in every family, mutilated as were the 
apple trees girdled in the orchards, uprooted, 
like them, and left for dead. 

For my next distribution, which was to be 
a more important one, I went to Mme. Ga- 
brielle. "Madame," said I, "it is true, is it not, 
that the parents of most of the children have 
enough money to buy capes?" "Yes," she ad- 
mitted. "But it is not true that they will not 
do so?" "Yes; there are so many things to 
buy when one has lost so much. We fear to 
spend the money." "Very well. Will you 
make me out a list for all the world?" The 
list was made ; a list so orderly that it could be 
used as a shopping guide. Coats for the wo- 



112 A Village In Picardy 

men and capes for the children were bought, 
including a coat for Lydie Cerf. They were 
brought down by our own truck, which had 
made a special trip to Amiens in the bitterest 
weather, and deposited with Mme. Gabrielle. 
"Madame," I said again as we brought the 
heaped armfuls in, "will you not make this dis- 
tribution yourself?" "But it is very difficult," 
she remonstrated, "and all the world will say 
that I am partial." "I will tell all the world 
that the distribution is mine," I urged. "You 
can see yourself that we are very busy y — and 
you know the size for each child." Reluctant 
though she was, Mme. Gabrielle's kind heart 
could not refuse. On a Sunday not long after, 
a strange yet strangely familiar audience sat 
in the little church, the women in coats all of 
one pattern, but of different colours, the chil- 
dren in smart blue hooded capes. No one 
looked self-conscious, or thanked us. The dis- 
tribution, like the snow, had fallen on the just 
and on the unjust; it was a providence for 
which one thanked God. 



CHAPTER IX 



EN PERMISSION 



AT noon time, on dispensary days, I some- 
times lunched with the doctors in Mme. 
Lefevre's kitchen. It was a heterogeneous 
spot, with two beds (one being stored for a 
niece), two cats, and a few neighbours always 
sitting near the fire. Usually the neighbours 
were waiting for la factrice. A tap at the 
window, and Madame ran to open it, and re- 
ceived a handful of letters which the postmis- 
tress brought each day by bicycle from Nesle. 
Were it cold, she herself, a capable, pleasant- 
faced woman, came in to join the group for a 
moment, threw back her long cape, and 
warmed her numb hands. Meantime specta- 
cles were brought out and the envelopes 
scanned. It was not alone of the return of the 
refugees that the village lived in hope. They 

113 




[A cut of a sword-scabbard.] 



114 



En Pemrssion 115 

might come unannounced, but the soldiers, en 
permission, — that was different. Any day Al- 
bert or Henri might write that he was coming 
home! 

And when they came! It was in Mme. 
Lef evre's kitchen again that I had the pleasure 
of seeing the greeting given to a soldier in 
faded blue. A bronzed and bearded man he 
was, the father of a family. But the family 
alas! the wife and the children, were avec les 
Bodies. M. Huillard seemed to have returned 
therefore, unheralded. As he opened the door, 
the neighbours rose with exclamations ; the men 
grasping his hands, the women presenting one 
cheek and then the other for a kiss. Ques- 
tions followed: Where had he been stationed? 
At Verdun, and, more lately, at St. Quentin. 
"At St. Quentin? Have you seen Narcisse, 
then?" Mme. Carpentier inquired eagerly. 
"Yes, your husband was well. I have a letter." 
And M. Huillard fumbled in his pockets and 
brought out a thumbed envelope with the 



n6 A Village in Picardy 

cramped address: Mme. Regina Carpentier, 
Canizy, Somme. 

An account of the recent bombardment is 
curtailed by M. Huillard's own desire for in- 
formation. This is his first visit to the village 
since his leave-taking during the tragic mobili- 
sation of 1914. He has known, of course, of 
the German occupation; he has heard the terri- 
ble news of the deportation of wife and 
children. He has seen other devastated vil- 
lages. But to-day, for the first time, he looks 
upon the ruins of his own home. I saw him 
standing alone that afternoon before the sag- 
ging door, which bore the staring military 
number 25, and beside it, chalked inscrip- 
tions in German and in English jostling each 
other: Gott mit uns. Hot + huns. Within, 
thistles grew about the hearth. M. Huillard 
uttered no sound, and shed no tears, but his 
face, as he turned away, was set in a white 
hatred, and his right hand rose to heaven in 
an unspoken vow. 

No soldier on his ten days' leave remained 



En Permission 117 

idle. Mme. Cordier's handsome son, looking 
even more handsome in the uniform of an Al- 
pine chasseur, was no exception. In fact, when 
I first saw him, the uniform, including his 
decoration, was covered by a mason's white 
blouse. Up on a ladder, he was white-washing 
the walls of the stable in which his family then 
lived. A huge brick manger in a dark corner 
was startingly brought out by his brush. It 
served as a kitchen table, and was laughingly 
referred to as one of the conveniences of the 
menage. In another home, I found one day a 
soldier-brother knocking up a cupboard out of 
rough planks. Cheerful was the sound of his 
vigorous hammer strokes, and cheerful the 
sight of a young and merry face among the 
ruins. It mattered not whether he had a bed 
to sleep in — one of the most difficult requests 
we had to refuse was that of a bed to a soldier 
— the younger poilu en permission was always 
gay. If his mother worked, he helped her ; and 
day after day through the Christmas holidays 
one of these boys walked to the Chateau each 



n8 A Village in Picardy 

morning to help Mme. Top in chop our wood. 
I happened in upon her on the eve of his de- 
parture. Her tiny cabin was full of an odour 
most appetising after my long day's walk. 
Over a glowing fire, she was turning waffles, 
"to put in his knapsack," she explained. But 
he had one the less for my having called; and 
over it his mother sprinkled half of the last 
teacupful of sugar she possessed. 

Mme. Topin had another son also serving 
with the colours, who came home quite often 
to see his wife, because he was making a slow 
recovery from gas-injured lungs. She, during 
his absence, taught in the village school, while 
her old mother kept house and took care of 
three-year-old Guy. M. Topin it was who 
showed me around his ruined yard one day, 
pointing out the place of the five-room cottage, 
and telling me the colours of the roses whose 
blackened stalks still remained against the 
walls. "This was white and very fragrant; 
that yellow. I planted it on Guy's birthday. 
Here we had a bed of mignonette. Take care, 



En Permission 119 

Guy — pardon, Mademoiselle." And he 
stooped to wrench away from the child's 
ringers a long cartridge picked up in the 
debris. "A German bullet/' he explained, 
handing it to me. "There are hundreds of 
them about." 

As I have said, the soldier en permission 
expected to work. Yet I know of one who was 
assigned to more of a task than he relished. 
Him, hapless being, I first encountered down 
by the old Chateau at Canizy, hunting rabbits 
for a stew. But as I remembered the dimen- 
sions of his mother's baraque, it seemed to me 
that self-interest might prompt him to leave 
his hunting to assist me for a time. Besides 
his grandmother, his mother, a brother and a 
sister, there was an aunt who had arrived too 
lodge with the family, — a refugiee from near 
Peronne. Utterly destitute and unhappy was 
the aunt. The fact that her husband and her 
daughter were still in the slavery from which 
she had escaped, would be enough to sadden 
any one, but she whispered to me that her sister 



120 A Village in Picardy 

did not make her welcome. At the time, we 
were much in need of a domestic at our camp. 
"Would you like to come and work for us, 
perhaps," I suggested. "We have no lodging, 
but I will find you a shelter in Hombleux from 
which you can walk over with Madame our 
cook." Rash promise, to which I added a 
complete outfit of furniture and two francs a 
day. The offer was accepted. 

From pillar to post, I then went to Hom- 
bleux. A regiment en repos had been quar- 
tered there since I had made arrangements 
with the baker's wife for a room in her 
tidy loft. Regiments succeeded one another 
rapidly, and during their sojourns there was 
literally no lodging to be had. I was finally 
directed to a corner in the outbuilding of a 
former convent school which was considered 
habitable. My soldier I pressed into service to 
assist its quondam tenant, who had moved out 
because it was so cold, in removing the vege- 
tables, wood and furniture she still had stored 
there. He looked on while a resourceful young 



En Permission 121 

girl pasted oiled paper on the iron window 
frame ; he went to the woods and chopped and 
hauled a tree for fuel; he brought over at the 
same time a plank with which to mend the door. 
This took a day, which I, meantime, spent in 
Ham. There I bought a bed, mattress and 
bedding, a stove, a pipe, an elbow for the same, 
a chair, a table, a metal wash basin and a 
pitcher, a saucepan, a little set of dishes, a 
lamp, a brush and a broom. It is surprising 
how many things are necessary for even a 
primitive existence. Two days more were 
consumed in setting these few articles in place, 
and all the neighbours helped. 

The snow had come, meantime, and the 
soldier returned to rabbit hunting. As he re- 
marked on pointing out the little roads beaten 
by them through the weeds, "They look much 
better en casserole" It remained for our own 
soldier at the chateau to bring our domestic to 
her new home. One frosty morning, Tambour 
and the cart awaited me after breakfast, and I 
set forth. Old Tambour appeared none too 



122 A Village in Picardy 

steady on the trot to which I urged him. "Qa 
glisse" explained Carlos, and we relapsed into 
a walk. In fact, all the way to Canizy we 
walked, the shrewd wind biting nose and ears 
and coursing under the blankets on the high 
seat. Carlos got out, winding the lines about 
the whipstock. The horse floundered through 
drifts, and he, adjusting his cap to the veering 
gusts, trudged at his head. At length, we 
debouched upon the direct road to the village. 
But, barring our way was a machine-gun 
squad. Already the red signals had been 
posted and the route was defendu. Even as we 
halted, came volleys like staccato hail. On 
other occasions, with honking horn, we have 
run this gauntlet, the sentries halting the fire 
for us to pass. But to-day, I judged it safer 
to turn down into a hollow, and skirt the ac- 
tion. Thus delayed, it was near noon when 
we turned into the gate of the Chateau at 
Canizy. 

We were expected, however; coffee was hot 
upon the stove, and the soldier en permission 



En Permission 123 

served it, stirring the cups in rotation with the 
one family spoon. Madame, our new domestic, 
was ready also, with quite a store of bedding 
and clothing done up in a sack. Two kisses 
apiece, a last admonition, a promise to come 
to see her on Sunday, and she climbed up over 
the wheel. To her, I imagine, the journey to 
Hombleux seemed like a voyage to a foreign 
country. Nor was she welcomed, as I after- 
wards learned, by her new neighbours in the 
commune. It seems, one should have gone to 
the mayor first for permission to instal her; 
and certainly one should have paid more money 
to that inconvenienced lady, the former tenant. 
As Madame said, "She talks most unkindly." ' 
To add to the newcomer's hardships, the winter 
wind ripped the oiled linen from the window, 
and her nephew, the soldier, never returned 
to mend the door. "Bien mat logee" having 
to walk a mile and a half through the snow at 
dawn and after dark, it is not to be wondered 
at that she made a final choice of her sister's 




[If I were grown up!] 
124 



En Permission 125 

sharp tongue and warm fire, and left our em- 
ploy. 

Akin to the soldier en permission is the sol- 
dier en repos. Of the latter class was our Car- 
los, who was given us by M. le Sous-Prefet, 
together with a horse and two carts. He was 
to report during his stay to no one but Mile, 
la Directrice, nor would the authorities take 
any direct cognisance of him save in case of her 
complaint. A southerner was Carlos, a dapper 
man from the Basque provinces. There he 
had a wife and two children whom he had not 
seen for three years. But he expected a per- 
mission shortly, he said; and that may have 
reconciled him to the uncongenial hewing of 
wood and drawing of water to which he was 
detailed. Day long he drove, or chopped trees, 
or cleaned the stable, as advised. His only 
diversion appeared to be our milk maid, — a 
harmless enough one, I presume; for she told 
us proudly and often how she received a letter 
from her soldier-husband every day. Never- 
theless, there was visible sadness when one 



126 A Village in Picardy 

morning Carlos announced that he had been 
transferred. And was he then going home? 
No, his permission had been taken away; he 
was returning to the front. He and Tambour 
were to join the artillery. Poor old Tambour, 
faithful, plodding; one knew not for which 
to feel more compassion, the horse or the 
master, as one pictured them dragging into 
position the grey seventy-fives! "Good-bye, 
then," I said, "I am sorry." "O, what would 
you," he replied. "So it goes. But you, you 
are leaving also. Some one has told me, for 
America — La bonne chance, Mademoiselle" 
Unlike Carlos only in that they came by 
regiments, were the shifting troops taken at 
intervals from the trenches for a brief rest in 
our more habitable villages. One saw them, a 
weary line of blue, marching down the roads, 
flanked by stretcher bearers, and followed by a 
provision train. Once settled, they stood about 
the corners of the streets or in the gaping door- 
ways; a disconsolate enough addition to the 



En Permission 127 

ruins. Or at the camp kitchens, drawn up to 
one side, they grouped themselves around huge 
cauldrons of soup. Sometimes a more am- 
bitious company set to work to clean up the 
village and built an outdoor bathing tank 
which was much in use. On one occasion, a 
dashing troop of blue devils gave military con- 
certs each evening. An incongruous sight was 
the band, drawn sprucely up in a desolate 
courtyard, and a strangely stirring sound, the 
music floating through the empty streets, of 
Ce que c J est qu un drape an. Often soldiers 
and even officers came over to see us at the 
Chateau and to ask for cigarettes or shoes. If 
one had time to listen, they talked for hours 
on the war. They were never boastful, these 
soldiers; they had a just estimate of the Ger- 
man strength of organisation; they had no il- 
lusions as to their own personal fate. Each 
one expected to die at his post. Patient, 
sturdy, intelligent, they gave one confidence 
that, however heavy the dawn bombardments, 



128 A Village in Picardy 

our lines would hold. And if our lines, then 
all the lines manned by them with such spirit- 
ual as well as physical courage. The morale of 
the poilu, unflinching, will yet win the war. 



CHAPTER X 

A LA FERME DU CALVAIRE 

T\TIDWAY between Hombleux and Ca- 
*• nizy, at the crossing of the high- 
way, stood on one side a Calvary, and on the 
other a demolished farm house. The lane here 
emerged from a hollow, so that both objects 
rose distinctly against the sky. About the 
Calvary, the poplars were shattered by shell- 
fire; back of the farm sloped an orchard, whose 
every tree had been lopped. Across the road 
and into the fields ran a zigzag trench, where 
could be found even yet blue coats and rusted 
helmets; the line of defence evidently for the 
highway, against the German advance. A 
square declivity, formerly a clay pit, perhaps 
an hectare in area, bordered road and trench. 
Its banks were green with grass, and in the 

129 



130 A Village in Picardy 

bottom land was a little orchard. At one side, 
half -hidden, was a hut. 

A solitary farm is rare in these rural com- 
munities, where the houses as a rule cluster in 
villages. I was undecided at first as to whether 
the Farm of the Calvary belonged to Hom- 
bleux or Canizy. But in the yard were two 
obvious reasons for calling and inquiring. 
Higher than the hut rose a heaped hay stack; 
at its base the apples from the orchard had been 
gathered in a mound of red and white. I ran 
down the path, too steep for walking, and 
knocked at the door. It was opened by a 
gaunt, dark man of perhaps forty-five. At a 
table sat his wife paring apples; and in a 
corner, quite unabashed, his daughter, pretty 
Colombe, finished lacing her bodice before she 
stepped forward to greet me. So small a room, 
in any of our villages, I had never been in. 
A double bed took up all the space except for 
a border of about two feet. The roof was so 
low that the man seemed to have acquired a 
perpetual stoop. 



A la Ferme du Calvaire 131 

"Entrez! entrezl" was the hospitable en- 
treaty; but not seeing how this might be pos- 
sible, I remained on the threshold. 

"I come from the Chateau," I began. 

"But yes, you are one of the Dames Ameri- 
caines, eh! We have often seen you cross the 
fields. Colombe, here, goes to the sewing class 
with you." Colombe smiled a recognition. 

"I should have called before, perhaps ; but I 
was not aware that a family lived in so small a 
place, until I saw the smoke from the chimney 
to-day." 

"Yes, it is small," admitted the wife. 

"A Boche hut, eh!" agreed her husband. 
"Yonder, across the road is my farm. Not 
one stone left ; all destroyed. I have asked for 
a baraque" 

I measured the interior with my eyes. "You 
would not have room for another bed " 

"If it folded, yes, and we would thank you. 
Colombe, she sleeps now on the ground." 

The bed being promised, I inquired as to 
fodder. Could I see if it were suitable to feed 






<L> 

A3 



B 

O 
*■< 

o 



132 



A la Ferme du Calvaire 133 

our cows? Assuredly; and the brown sides 
of the stack were rudely pulled apart that I 
might see and smell the sweet hay within. How 
much would it weigh and how much would it 
cost? A bargain was finally concluded for 
eight hundred francs. 

This was the first of many visits to the hut 
beside the road. Going or coming, sharp eyes 
spied me, and friendly voices called me in. 
Once it was for a bumper of sparkling cider. 

"I make it myself, from the apples. But I 
have to take them to Mme. Marie's in Hom- 
bleux because my press the Germans broke. 
Ah, the Germans!" he continued. "It is only 
a month and a half since I returned, eh !" 

"Were you then taken to Germany?" 

"To Belgium; and I worked, always. And 
hungry, always hungry; one has nothing, eh! 
to eat." 

On another occasion I was offered apples; 
not the small, sour ones from which cider was 
made, but lucious golden globes that adorned 
the narrow beams of the hut like a frieze. 



134 A Village in Picardy 

"See," said Monsieur. "I will put them in 
this sack, so that you can carry them the more 
easily." 

But I, thinking of the long miles yet ahead 
of me, ventured to suggest that I call on my 
return. 

"Very well, only, look you, I shall not be 
here. But wait, I will hide them. Behold, in 
the chaudiere" and suiting the action to the 
word he lifted the cover of the cauldron and 
placed them within. "No one will think to 
look for them there. Au revoir, until you re- 
turn." 

But a rain set in that afternoon; a slant 
mist which made Corot-like effects of brown 
autumn copses and shut one in from the some- 
times too lonely sweep of the plain. At the 
same time, it beat persistently on my face, and 
made heavier at every step my woollen uni- 
form. I did not stop therefore for my apples, 
and wondered for a few days what had been 
their fate. But not for long. 

One morning at breakfast I was told that 



A la Ferme du Calvaire 135 

I had a caller. Now callers about this time 
of a morning had become frequent, ever since 
Monsieur le Maire of the commune told his 
villagers that they must apply to us rather 
than to him for beds and stoves and cupboards. 
I visualised the waiting crones of Hombleux 
whom in America we should have thrust into 
an Old Ladies' Home. Not so the French 
Government, which respected their sentiment 
and built for each on her own plot her own 
baraque. Knowing well that we had no cup- 
boards, and no prospect of getting any, I 
rose with a sigh. But my face brightened at 
the sight of M. Guilleux. 

Over his back hung a sack, nor was it empty. 

"You did not come for your apples," he 
began. "I hope that you wish them, however." 
He unslung the sack, opened it, and disclosed 
the golden fruit. 

I thanked him. "But the sack, you wish it 
back?" 

"Yes, for look you; it is a little souvenir." 
And at that he showed me certain crosses and 



136 A Village in Picardy 

darts and letterings in German script which 
indicated by number and description the pris- 
oner, Guillaume Guilleux of the commune of 
Hombleux and the farm du Calvaire. "I took 
this with me, eh! I would not part with it." 

"Not to me, Monsieur? To me also it would 
be a souvenir, to take to America." 

"O no, Mademoiselle, never," and his hands 
clutched it involuntarily. "The souvenir and 
the memory, they are mine. Both my grand- 
children shall remember also in the years to 
come." 

But the sack was not the only souvenir con- 
tained in the little hut. I spied one day three 
tiny teacups depending from nails upon the 
wall. They were even smaller than coffee 
cups, and delicately flowered. 

"Oh, how pretty," I exclaimed. "May I 
look?" 

Mme. Guilleux took them down with fum- 
bling fingers and a suddenly altered face. For 
the first time, I noticed the sharp indrawn 



A la Ferme du Calvaire 137 

wrinkles about mouth and eyes which tell of 
suffering. 

"They belonged to Solange, Colombe's sis- 
ter," and not able to continue, she hid her face 
in her apron. "They were her tea-set," she 
went on in broken sentences. "Her father and 
I bought them for her on her thirteenth birth- 
day, and she always kept them. Mon Dieu, 
how lovely she was! Curls, and long lashes, 
and skin like apple blossoms, and eyes blue 
like those flowers! She was my oldest, and 
good as she was pretty. But on the night when 
the Germans came, they tore her from my 
arms. Why do I live?" she broke into sobs. 
"Solange, Solange!" 

She wiped her eyes at length, and regarded 
the little cups. "When we returned, I 
searched the ruins. I was fortunate, for I 
found these. They were all that I did find. 
Everything else had been destroyed. Nor did 
I save anything, for look you, after the sol- 
diers seized Solange, I ran hither and thither 
distracted, and knew not what to save." 



138 A Village in Picardy 

She rose, took the cups from my hands, and 
rehung them on the wall. 

How do they live, I wondered, as I passed 
out and over the fields? How do these mothers 
keep their reason, who have seen their daugh- 
ters taken into a captivity upon which shuts 
down a silence deep as death? One under- 
stands the comment of Mme. Charles Thuil- 
lard, who in spite of her sharp tongue has a 
most human heart. She was showing me the 
picture of her daughter one day; an enlarge- 
ment such as all the world makes of its dead. 
"Thank God," she said, "she was happy; she 
died before the war." 



CHAPTER XI 

LES PETITS SOLDATS 

Ou t'en vas-tu, soldat de France, 
Tout equipe, pret au combat, 
Ou t'en vas-tu, petit soldat? 
C'est comme it plait a la Patrie, 
Je n'ai qu' a suivre les tambours. 
Gloire au drapeau, 
Gloire au drapeau. 
J'aimerais bien revoir la France, 
Mais bravement mourir est beau. 

SO, in chorus, sang the children of my vil- 
lage, day after day, as they marched and 
circled about us up and down the streets. A 
catching tune ; a laughing eye ; did they realise 
that only twelve miles away on the firing line 
their soldiers were dying for the glory of the 
flag? No, it was not possible for them, fugi- 
tives though they themselves had been, to live 
the horrors of war. As Mme. Gabrielle said: 

139 



140 A Village in Picardy 

"The children laugh; they do not know that 
our world is destroyed, and it is well." 

Yet it would be hard to find a more manly 
group of boys in any land than those of Canizy. 
They were soldiers, even in their dress; blue 
caps, and blue or khaki blouses and trousers 
which their mothers had cut and made from the 
cast-off coats of passing troops, English or 
French as the case might be. Stockings also 
were of a military colour; for as Mme. Marie 
Gense explained: "One can find stockings in 
the trenches sometimes, — dirty, of course, and 
ragged; but they can be washed and raveled, 
and the yarn is excellent." So it came about 
that little Robert had one pair of stockings 
with blue tops and khaki feet, because, you 
understand, there was not enough wool of one 
colour to complete them. Above his wooden 
sabots, the straight splicing was plainly visible, 
if he were ever en repos. But my memory of 
Robert is of tireless feet that twinkled almost 
as merrily as his eyes. It was no hardship for 
him to walk the eight miles back and forth to 



Les Petits Soldats 141 

the Chateau of a morning for his quart can of 
milk. Mud, rain, snow, it was all one to him. 
By the hand, he often brought a younger 
cousin, Albert, aged six. Chubby-faced and 
sturdy of leg was Albert, clad in a diminutive 
khaki suit, and a brown visored cap which 
failed to blight his red cheeks. Robert, being 
brave and unconscious, whistled the merry call 
he had been taught, "Bob White, Bob White!" 
and smiled at all the world. But Albert, 
being shy, buried his small nose between cap 
and muffler, hung his head, and if pressed too 
far by unsought civilities, presented his back. 
It would be small wonder if all the children 
of Canizy had been shy. With their elders 
they were virtual prisoners during the Ger- 
man occupation. They had no incentive to 
gather in groups, no church and no school. 
Bather, they were taught to slip in and out in 
silence lest they attract sinister attention. 
One of our little soldiers to the end of his life 
will carry a mark of German brutality in a 
hand maimed by a too well aimed grenade. 



142 A Village in Picardy 

Even since the Retreat, their life has consisted 
of skulking more or less among the ruins. 
Raiding aeroplanes, by night or day, drop 
bombs in their vicinity; for Canizy lies near 
to Ham, the munition centre of the St. Quentin 
front. They hear the bombardments ; and the 
rumours fly that the Bodies are advancing. 
Will the lines hold ? Their mothers keep eyes 
and ears open to the eastward. One refuses 
to buy a stove, because she thinks it is too 
risky an investment; her husband is sure the 
Germans will return, and a stove, it cannot be 
carried away. "What will you do then, if the 
Germans come?" I ask. "Fly" is the uni- 
versal reply. "We know the Bodies; better to 
die than remain" 

Even in the fields, a child cannot play. One 
day I was taken by a bevy of laughing little 
girls to see an ohus which had fallen in the 
graveyard near the entrance to the church. It 
had lain there some months unexploded, hid- 
den by grass and weeds. But the prepara- 
tions for All Saints' Day, as punctiliously 




[And do the little Boche children hug their father?] 



143 



144 A Village in Picardy 

made last autumn as in times of peace, re- 
vealed it. The girls danced about it like 
sprites, touching it spitefully with their toes. 
"Take care," I cried. "Come away." Merry 
laughter greeted my alarm. "There are many 
of them," said dare-devil Therese ; "they do no 
harm." Nevertheless, knowing that a farmer 
had been killed while ploughing, not far away, 
by just such a shell, I sent word to the military 
authorities who removed this particular obus, 
before the next Sunday's mass. The Govern- 
ment recognises the danger, and prints large 
placards of warning, which are hung up in the 
schoolrooms. 

The schools themselves are depressing 
enough, for against no class of buildings did 
the Germans vent more hatred. Throughout 
the devastated area, they were completely de- 
stroyed. Ecole des Filles, or Ecole des 
Garpons may still be seen in white capitals 
adorning a gaping arch or a jagged wall. 
But the schools, such as they are, are held in 
half-ruined dwellings, or in baraques. One 



Les Petits Soldats 145 

such dilapidated interior bore, beside the warn- 
ing against spent shells, the following "Fable 
for the day," written in the teacher's slant hand 
upon the blackboard: "At our last breath, we 
shall have nothing. Since we have neither 
father nor mother, we are now orphans. 
Nevertheless, we must do right. We must do 
right because it is right." 

In Canizy, as I have said, there was no 
school. The walls even of the former school 
building were razed to the ground. But the 
children were supposed to attend the school of 
another commune, that of Offoy, a mile and a 
half distant along the canal. This seemingly 
simple provision for education was made im- 
possible by the fact that regiments continu- 
ously en repos at Offoy used the sandy buttes 
formed by the Somme at this point for mitrail- 
leuse practice. One saw them every afternoon 
at half past two, bringing out their gruesome 
targets, in the shape of a human head and 
shoulders, and sentineling the crossroads with 
notices and red flags. Then woe to the urchin 



146 A Village in Picardy 

lingering perhaps in Offoy on some belated 
errand. Like the rabbits he must stay under 
cover until the fusillades should cease. Yet 
the children of the village were not wholly 
neglected. It was their former teacher, now 
resident in Hombleux, who taught them the 
stirring Petit Soldat. And from Offoy came 
M. l'Aumonier, of whom you shall hear later, 
to teach them the catechism and to receive them 
into the church. "They are very gentils, the 
children of Canizy," he assured me one day. 
"They are not like the children of the other 
villages. They have brave parents; they are 
well brought up." 

Well brought up, yes, in all the usages of 
docility and endurance. Shifting of troops, 
obedience to military masters, slavery and pil- 
lage, such are the facts which these children 
have learned for three years. But grafted as 
the lesson has been upon a spirit gentle by 
nature, the result is terrible in its sombreness. 
Robert Gense, uncannily helpful; Raymond 
Carpentier, threadbare and bowed at fourteen, 



Les Petits Soldats 147 

— a look like that of a faithful, whipped dog 
in his eyes, — Elmire Carlier, whose lovely 
mouth is carved in patience, the Tabarys, rag- 
ged and elfin — these are the children of 
Picardy. But where is the spontaneity of 
childhood? Where may one find it in the 
track of war? 

On our own playground, perhaps, some- 
times. Yet the children had to be encouraged 
to play. They might remember the words of 
the rondes which have lately become familiar 
to American children also through the illus- 
trations of Boutet de Monville, but they no 
longer curtseyed as the beautiful gentlemen 
and the beautiful ladies should sur le pont 
d' Avignon. They no longer had books to 
read. A prayer book, a hymnal, sometimes 
the family records ; these were all the literature 
saved in their mothers' sacks of flight. But 
the play teacher draws our waifs of the war 
as if with a magic flute ; even M. Lanne's cows 
come trooping with the children, because the 
boy who herds them cannot come without. 



oo 



-f*v*0 



h 




148 



Les Petits Soldats 149 

The babies come, with older sister nurses ; and 
on the outskirts may be seen bent grandfather 
or grandmother, forgetting sorrow for the 
moment, in watching the romping groups. 
And even after the store automobile, stripped 
of its merchandise, honks persistently its desire 
to be off, the joy of that brief hour is perpetu- 
ated in the books that the teacher leaves be- 
hind. Who so proud then as the boy or girl 
singled out to be the owner of a book for a 
whole week? Contes des Fees, petite s his- 
toires, the rondes themselves; they are treas- 
ures comparable to fairy gold. Yet reading 
never seems to interfere with duty; Raymond, 
or Desire, or Adrien, you are likely to meet 
them as usual en route to Voyennes for apples, 
or returning from Ham with loaves of bread 
hanging, like life preservers, about their necks ; 
they pasture the few cows; they feed the rab- 
bits; they bring wood and dig coal, — they are 
the men of Canizy. 

Such grow to be the soldiers of whom France 
is proud ; those older children, the poilus, whom 



150 A Village in Picardy 

all the world has come to know. Long ago 
Julius Cassar knew them also, and Hirtius 
Pansa wrote of them: "They make war with 
honour, without deceit and without artifice." 
Brought up to adore la Patrie, singing of 
death, as of glory, the little soldier of France 
marches to-day as did the child in the Chil- 
dren's Crusade. Across three thousand miles 
I hear his refrain: 

Point de chagrin, 

Point de chagrin, 

II a sa gourde, il a sa pipe, 

C'est un gaillard tou jours en train. 



CHAPTER XII 



M. L AUMONIER 



IN Canizy, one found always something 
new. It might be an obus, or a soldier en 
permission, or a family refugiee, or a baraque, 
I learned to expect the unexpected. Having 
carefully negotiated with M. Lanne for cer- 
tain timbers and chicken wiring which formed 
the basis for a roof of which I had need, I was 
prepared to see that they had vanished over- 
night, and to express neither surprise nor in- 
dignation when I was told that they were 
transformed into the foundation for Mme. 
Picard's baraques. Having left glass, dia- 
mond cutter, putty, brads, and a list of those 
who needed the panes, I was not discouraged 
when week after week went by without M. 
Augustin's cutting them. The fact that M. 
Noulin had brought the materials over in his 

151 



152 A Village in Picardy 

cart, and held them on his premises, was doubt- 
less reason enough why M. Augustin stayed 
his hand. At all events, it seemed wiser to 
leave the solution of this problem to the village ; 
and the last I knew, it hinged on the return of 
a soldier en permission, a glazier by trade. 
He, all the world assured me, would actually 
cut the glass! 

The Noulins themselves were among my 
earliest surprises. How they came I know 
not, but one day I found the trio, father, 
mother and daughter, tidying up the premises 
they had rented from M. Huillard. The out- 
ermost room, from the walls of which still de- 
pended half-charred pictures, gaped to the 
sky. But this was used as a store-room for 
neatly stacked wood and fodder; within, the 
main room served as both kitchen and epicerie; 
off it opened two bedrooms, and in the rear 
was a yard. The rooms were completely fur- 
nished and the yard stocked with hens and 
about thirty rabbits. In the stable stood a 
pony and a high-wheeled cart. All these 



M. L/Aumonier 153 

goods had M. Noulin bought and brought back 
from Compiegne, whither he had fled at the 
outbreak of the war. 

It was in the epicerie, which we provisioned, 
that I came to look for most of the news of 
Canizy. Here, about the table, might sit 
drinking the Moroccans who were repairing 
the canal. Here Mme. Moulin thrust into my 
hand an account of our own Unit in her fashion 
journal of the month; an account glowing with 
undeserved praise of America and concluding 
with the words: "Heureux pays, ou sur les 
mairies des villages on pourrait ecrire: 'Aide- 
toi, l'Amerique t'aidera.' Plus heureuses 
Americaines, qui peuvent et qui savent don- 
ner!" 

Here she showed me a postal marked 
Deutschland, and bearing on its back the pic- 
ture of a jovial-looking man in civilian dress. 
"It is my son," explained Mme. Noulin. "He 
is a prisonnier militaire, and sends me this to 
show me how well he is. He writes, too, that 
he has plenty to eat, of sugar, of chocolate, 



154 A Village in Picardy 

and is always warm, — there is so much of 
coal! Think you it is true?" 

On the table was lying a package, done up 
with many directions, all pointing to Germany. 
"What is this?" I asked. "That is for him; 
but the factrice could not take it to-day; such 
are her orders. No packages will be trans- 
ported by Germany this week, or next, or who 
knows for how long? It is on account of a 
troop movement, she says." 

"But why then do you send, if he has no 
need?" 

"There, what did I tell you?" broke in her 
husband. "Oh, these women; they have no 
minds ! It is the enemy who sends the letters, 
that we may feel more bitterly the cold, the 
hunger, the misery, that we endure!" 

It was at Mme. Noulin's, in fine, that I first 
met M. I'Aumonier. 

A snowy, windy morning it was, and the 
glare and the smart in my eyes blinded me so 
that I did not at first note anything unusual 
about the blue-clad soldier sitting by the fire. 



M. L'Aumonier 155 

Declining Madame's invitation to share the 
open bottle of wine on the table, I was pro- 
ceeding with my errand when she interrupted, 
"Mademoiselle, I want you to know that this 
is M. l'Aumonier from OfToy, who takes an 
interest, like you, in Canizy." 

The chaplain arose at the informal introduc- 
tion. A deprecatory smile became well his 
sensitive yet Roman features, and a quick flush 
heightened his colour. "But no," he said, his 
enunciation betraying him a gentleman in spite 
of the plain uniform, "it is I who have been 
hearing of your goodness and that of your co- 
benefactresses, Mademoiselle." 

"Mademoiselle," protested Mme. Noulin, 
"you should know that Monsieur walks from 
OfFoy every morning before eight o'clock to 
conduct a class in the catechism in the church." 

"That matters nothing; it is my pleasure, I 
would say, duty. But you — you who have 
come from America to help my poor France, 
you who walk so much farther. I, I have legs 



156 A Village in Picardy 

trained for walking by long marches, by a sol- 
dier's life " 

But I knew something of the duties of a 
military chaplain. Had I not seen the bare, 
dark infirmary where he comforted his inva- 
lided companions? Had I not visited the 
baraque called the Soldiers' Library which 
was more or less in his charge; that cheerless 
hut with the books locked out of sight in one 
corner, and the directions for rifle practice 
confronting one on the wall? Could not one 
divine the battle charges when M. l'Aumonier 
went forward in the ranks with his comrades, 
or stopped only to give them the sacrament 
as they fell? Did I not know the calls made 
upon him by the civilians also, now that he was 
en repos? A soldier's life, indeed, has inured 
the military chaplains of the French army to 
hardships by contrast greater perhaps than 
any endured by the other soldiers of France. 

I strove to stop him, to express to him some- 
thing of my deep appreciation of this added 




[If it hadn't been for the officer, I don't think the 
soldiers would have done anything to us.] 



157 



158 A Village in Picardy 

burden he had taken on his shoulders in the 
spiritual care of the children of Canizy. 

But he waved away all implied sacrifice. 
"It is a pleasure," he repeated, "and the chil- 
dren are so good." 

Thereafter, M. FAumonier became my most 
disinterested ally in our village. Did a mass 
seem desirable, the time was set late enough 
for me to reach it from the Chateau. What 
mattered it that thereby Monsieur did not 
breakfast till noon? When Mme. Gabrielle 
was still undecided over her distribution, he 
consented to lend his presence to the function, 
and thereby insured its success. He even 
undertook the responsibility of such a mun- 
dane matter as the cutting of the glass. Day 
after day, I met him in one family circle or 
another, making pastoral calls. Very differ- 
ent were those happy weeks to the villagers 
from the months preceding, when spiritual 
consolation came only with death. He seemed 
to find entrance into the hearts of the people, 



M. L'Aumonier 159 

and they responded to his care as flowers to 
the sun. 

Wherever M. l'Aumonier went, went also 
a clean, blond soldier boy of twenty, who was 
studying to be a priest like his friend. He 
spoke English, which he had learned as a ship- 
ping clerk in an exporting house at Havre. 
"Our Colonel," he explained, "is very much in- 
terested in the civilians, particularly in the 
children. He even sent one of his captains to 
Paris to buy warm clothing for every one of 
them in Offoy. He is a very rich man and 
very kind. He has detailed me to help M. 
l'Aumonier all that I can." 

We were walking along the canal as we 
spoke, and the wind blew straight from the 
north. M. TAumonier said something in a 
low voice, and the boy whipped off his scarf. 
"Yes, please, you are cold; you must take it," 
and perforce the scarf was wound about my 
neck. 

"How long are you to be here?" I asked, 



160 A Village in Picardy 

dreading to see this regiment pass back to the 
front. 

"Me, I do not know. I have been wounded, 
you know; twice with the bayonet, and ten 
days ago I was gassed. The lungs pain me 
yet, — I cannot do much work." 

"You," broke in his superior, "you, Made- 
moiselle, will go before we do — for you have 
told me that you leave soon for America. At 
least, you will have seen something, and can 
tell them there of the misery which France 
suffers." 

"But one sees so little, — the trenches, the 
battles, the hardships of the soldiers, I know 
nothing of these." 

"The trenches? There is little to see; is it 
not so, comrade? But this," he swept his arm 
to indicate the circle of destruction all about 
us, "this you know. Tell them of the agony 
and of the fortitude of Picardy." 

We had come to the parting of our ways. 
Turning west, I was confronted by a winter 
sunset; bare branches, crimson streamers, cold 



M. L'Aumonier 161 

lakes of turquoise ; and bleak against this back- 
ground, the ruins of Canizy. M. l'Aumonier 
was right; of this one who has seen it cannot 
help to speak; of the terrible devastation, of 
the silent courage of those who live in it and 
fight, unheralded, their fight for France. 



CHAPTER XIII 



HEUREUX NOEL 



CHRISTMAS weather, sunlight, moon- 
light and snow; our grove a white sten- 
cil ; our baraques with their red shutters by day 
and their lighted windows by night, like 
painted Christmas cards; our defaced and 
ruined villages new-clothed with beauty, — 
such was our Christmas week. But the snow, 
so beautiful to the eye, accentuated the bitter 
cold of our ill-lodged and under-nourished 
neighbours, and the moon pointed out to hos- 
tile aeroplanes desired points of attack. It 
was on account of the dangerous moonlight 
that the Bishop of Amiens forbade midnight 
masses in the churches. We, and our vil- 
lagers, were the more disappointed because 
even during the German occupation these 
masses had been sung. We heard of loaded 

162 



Heureux Noel 163 

Christmas trees, and of parties where cakes 
and chocolate were served by German officers. 
"Not for all the world, you understand," 
Colombe, our informant, explained, "just for 
themselves." Yet all the world had had some 
share in the German Christmas, and we felt 
eager to make up a little for the added hard- 
ships caused since that time by German 
cruelty, for all the ruined homesteads which 
are but the outward sign of families scattered, 
missing and dead. 

Yet at first, so prevalent was the feeling 
of sadness, we thought it might not be desir- 
able to have a fete. Did the villagers want 
one? Had the Christmas tree too many Ger- 
man associations? We made inquiry of M. 
le Sous-Prefet, and of the Commandant of the 
Third Army. From the latter came the fol- 
lowing reply : 

27.11.17. Guiscard 

Dear Miss , 

I am glad to tell you that you got a stupid gossiping 
about the Christmas tree. 



164 A Village in Picardy 

There is nothing at all in this country against the 
charming practice to delight the children with a spruce 
of which some toys are hanging all round among as 
many candels as possible. 

Therefore you are free to be nice for the poor people 
once more and God bless you for your splendid charity. 

With my kindest regards for you, for your chief , and 
your sisters. 

Yours respectfully, 



So it came about that in each of the villages 
there was a spruce, with toys and candles and 
goodies, and carols and Christmas cheer. In 
Canizy, thanks to good fortune and to M. 
FAumonier, the fete was especially pretty. I 
had not yet met the chaplain or planned my 
Christmas, when, on a late December after- 
noon, I happened to pass the little chapel, on 
my way to visit a group of families lodged 
within the grounds of the old Chateau. Sev- 
eral times before I had been inside, once for a 
mass on All Saints' Day, and more than once 
to look at the faded painting behind the altar, 
and at the quaintly quilted banners of the 




- •>.. S4" JL a. fxasS £**- cU. y\bwvulrtLo™-. , 

[He has not come? He has been mobilised. . . 
And he has not had any leave.] 



165 



1 66 A Village in Picardy 

saints along the wall. These, strange to say, 
had been left in place by the German invaders ; 
save for a soiled altar cloth and two or three 
broken windows, the church, indeed, appeared 
as if it might still be in constant use. 

To-day, in spite of the early gathering dusk, 
and the long walk home, an impulse beckoned 
me in, — a very definite impulse, however, for 
I had in mind to decipher a moulded coat of 
arms upon the walls, and to search the sacristy. 
In other village churches, alas! dismantled, 
were to be found carved chests of drawers, 
black letter Bibles, brasses, and glorious books 
of chants. Perhaps my little chapel might 
contain treasures also. Past Our Lady of 
Lourdes and St. Anthony of Padua, past the 
Sacred Heart, and that humble saint of gar- 
dens, St. Fiacre, to whom had nevertheless 
been given the place of honour on the Virgin's 
right, and up through the chancel I went. 
The door of the sacristy creaked at my sacri- 
lege. 

The alcove on which it opened was hung 



Heureux Noel 167 

with cobwebs. The floor was littered ; drawers 
gaping awry disclosed a medley of candle ends, 
tinsel flowers, vases and books. But on 
shelves across the end, my eye caught glowing 
colours of vestments, green and gold and pur- 
ple, lying in the same folds, apparently, in 
which M. le Cure had left them when he went 
forth into captivity three years ago. In a 
corner cabinet were sundry images, broken 
for the most part, and among them that of a 
wax doll, broken-armed and blackened with 
age, but encased in a bell of glass. In an 
opposite corner, behind a scaffolding, I found 
another treasure; a tiny thatched hut upon a 
standard, evidently designed to be borne in 
processions. Ivy, turned crisp and brown, en- 
twined its four pillars, and chestnut leaves, 
silvered with dust, made an applique upon the 
thatch. The God of Gardens, the Festival of 
the First Fruits, perhaps, — had I not come 
here upon a Roman survival in old Picardy? 
But, suddenly, I saw with other eyes; here 



1 68 A Village in Picardy 

were the cross and the Christ-child; I had 
stumbled on the Christmas creche. 

Time pressed; I noted again the faded 
blazons which flanked the saints on either wall 
— a closed crown, a shield embossed with seven 
fleurs-de-lis, and upheld by two leopards — shut 
the outer door, and took my way to the 
Chateau. One can see that the Chateau of 
Canizy is ancient, by its two stone turrets and 
its Gothic arch. At least, it is so ancient that 
no one in the village remembers the family 
whose royal escutcheon adorns its chapel walls. 
It is but lately a ruin, however, at the wanton 
hands of the Germans. In a stable in the 
farmyard, I found the family I had come to 
visit, formerly domestics of the estate. 

The old, bent grandmother, vacant-eyed 
and silent, sat in a corner nearest the fire. 
The mother, whom I never saw without her 
black cap, shook hands and dusted off a chair. 
The daughter, lovely as a beam of sunshine in 
that dark interior, offered me wine. 

"But no," I protested, "it is late," and hav- 



Heureux Noel 169 

ing paid for the knitting of a pair of stockings, 
which was my errand, I continued, "Tell me, 
please. I have just come from the sacristy. 
There is a little house there." 

"The creche!" 

"There is also a doll." 

"Yes, the little Jesus!" 

"Have you then all you need for the creche, 
and would you like a mass for Noel?" 

At that even the grandmother's eyes lighted. 

"A mass! We have not had one for three 
years !" 

Who, then, would clean the church, who 
trim the creche, who tell me what to get for 
it? The answers came as rapidly as the ques- 
tions. Elmire had always had charge of the 
creche; she would return with me at once to 
see what was lacking. 

Together we made our way back and inven- 
toried ( 1 ) the creche itself ; ( 2 ) a white lace- 
bordered square, (3) the little Jesus, and (4) 
some tinsel, or angel's hair. 

"There is lacking," Elmire thought quickly, 



170 A Village in Picardy 

"a Saint Joseph, a Blessed Virgin, six tapers, 
cotton wool, and perhaps a star." 

Twice on my homeward journey I was 
stopped by Elmire's younger brother, running 
after me with breathless messages: "Elmire 
says, would you please get a shepherd," and, 
"Elmire asks for three little sheep." 

Where one was to get these was as much a 
mystery as the priest for the mass. But I 
promised that all should be done. 

The figures for the creche were actually 
found in Amiens. To them was added a new 
little Jesus in a cradle; and the whole was 
brought by hand to Elmire. The delight of 
the entire family in unwrapping the various 
bundles was equalled only by my own in 
watching them. Afterwards, in the stable, 
the creche was trimmed. Artificial flowers, 
blue and pink and tinsel, bloomed under 
Elmire's deft fingers; the pillars were fluted 
with coloured paper, the roof plaited with holly 
leaves. A lamp was necessary in the dark 
place, and its light fell on the eager faces of 




- Sc. oh **wf pa* & YUZJL* t 0%+ <s<fiA**^ 

[Well, if we don't see Santa Claus, we may see a Zep- 
pelin, anyhow!] 



171 



172 A Village in Picardy 

the family,, grouped about that fairy hut. "In 
a stable," I thought as I looked at them, "in 
a stable, the Christ is born again." 

But it was M. FAumonier who voiced my 
thought at mass on Christmas Day. He had 
made a children's service of this, centred about 
the creche. After the cantiques, led by the 
soldier-boy, after the triumphal Adeste, 
Fideles, the children knelt in a circle about the 
cradle of the Christ. ■ 

"My children," began the chaplain, "this 
year, you yourselves live in huts, in barns, and 
in stables; so in a stable lives the little Jesus, 
as you see. You know what it is to be cold, 
beneath the snow upon the roof; so does the 
little Jesus. You have been hungry; so is he. 

"My children, it behooves you, therefore, to 
make for the little Jesus a cradle in your 
hearts ; cleanse them, each of you, and ask the 
little Jesus in. 

"What next should you do, my children? 
Should you not pray first of all for yourselves, 
that you may be kept from sin? Next, forget 



Heureux Noel 173 

not to pray for the soldiers of la Patrie, who 
only a few miles away, guard you from your 
enemies. Next, think on your fathers, your 
older brothers and sisters, who are with the 
Germans in captivity. Beseech mercy for 
them, my children, that the good God may 
return them to your homes. Next, be espe- 
cially thoughtful of your mothers and obedient 
to them, who stand to you in the place of both 
your parents. And last, but also of impor- 
tance, my children, remember in your prayers 
your benefactresses, these ladies who have given 
you this year the Christmas creche/' 

M. l'Aumonier said more, but I could not 
hear it. I was aware that he himself set the 
children an example by praying for us, heretics 
though we were. It was only when we came 
out into the open sunlight, and walked up the 
street to Mme. Lefevre's to strip the tree, that 
laughter became possible, and that one could 
see the accustomed smile in his eyes. Yet 
even at the fete, we could not escape from 
thanks. The presents, selected to be sure with 




- LC -fri. L C.UU. cjlZXL* -vww*>^ 

[And if it freezes to-night? 
Why, old chap, we can sit down.] 



174 



Heureux Noel 175 

care, but so inadequate compared with the 
needs, were hardly distributed when a hush 
fell on the packed room. A boy stepped for- 
ward, and began to read from a piece of paper 
in his hand. A girl followed. Their elders 
listened with the greatest satisfaction, nodding 
their heads and smiling at our amazement. 
And this is what they said, — a measure not of 
what we did, but of the spirit of stricken 
Canizy : 

Le cceur des dames Americaines s'est emu, a la pensee 
des miseres qu'avait entrainees derriere soi, la terrible 
guerre, et vous etes venues parmi nous les mains pleines 
de bienfaits et vos cceurs debordant de devouement. 

II nous est bien doux de vous dire merci, en cette 
circonstance creee encore par votre charite. Notre merci 
passera, permettez nous Mesdames et cheres Bien- 
faitrices, par la creche du petit enfant Jesus ! 

Puisse-t-'il vous rendre en consolation, ce que vous lui 
donnez en bienfaits ! Au debut de l'annee nouvelle, nos 
voeux sont pour vous et pour ceux qui vous sont chers ! 
Que Dieu comble de gloire, et de prosperite votre noble 
Amerique! Qu'il feconde sa generosite inlassable, que 
Dieu vous accorde une bonne sante, nos cheres Bien- 
faitrices, et qu'il vous dise toute Faffection de cette 
commune, profondement reconnaissante. 



CHAPTER XIV 

FIDELISSIMA, PICARDIE 

SINCE the commencement of this short 
volume, the German flood has rolled again 
across the Somme. Peronne, Nesle, Ham, 
Noyon, those towns mentioned so often and 
so gloriously in the annals of France, have 
fallen once more into the hands of the enemy. 
With them go the villages where my Unit 
laboured. Canizy, it is no more. The green- 
bladed wheatfields have become fields of un- 
speakable carnage; the poor ruins again smoke 
to heaven, and down the shattered highways 
course endlessly the grey columns of that 
Emperor whose empire is pillage and death. 
What, then, remains to us of our labours? 
At least a memory in the lives of the peasants, 
and a present help in this their time of stress. 
Our villagers were rescued, and taken by spe- 

176 



Fidelissima, Picardie 177 

cial trains to safety. The Unit accomplished 
this work of succour. Their trucks were 
driven under shell fire through the villages to 
collect the inhabitants; sometimes they were 
the last over the bridges; they left our head- 
quarters only when the Uhlans were within 
charging distance; they have fed and clothed 
thousands of refugees and soldiers. Men- 
tioned with them in the newspaper accounts of 
their service is our Red Cross truck driver, 
Dave. The fate that has overtaken our peas- 
ants, what is it but a repetition of the imme- 
morial blows that have welded and tempered 
their ancestral spirit? As one of their his- 
torians has limned them: "Les Picards sont 
francs et unis. ... lis vivent de peu. ... II 
arrive rarement que Factivite et le desir de 
s'avancer les determinent a sortir de leur pays. 
. . . lis sont sinceres, fideles, libres, brus- 
ques, attaches a leurs opinions, fermes dans 
leurs resolutions." * It was to this spirit that 

* Introduction a la histoire generate de la Province de 
Picardie, Dom Grenier. 



178 A Village in Picardy 

an ancient king of France paid honour, when 
he granted his kinsman, who held this province, 
a coat of arms bearing the royal lilies, and the 
motto : Fidelissima, Picardie. 

A thousand such Pieards we have known, 
women for the most part; enduring a bitter 
winter, a daily hazard, that they might live on 
their own land and till their own fields once 
more. There was Mme. Pottier, sitting in her 
wrecked bakery, where the empty bread 
baskets were arranged like plaques against the 
walls. Her husband and her three daughters 
were prisoners. Her youngest son had died 
a soldier. She showed me with trembling 
hands the letter she had received from his 
Colonel, commending his clean life and his 
brave death. Her only remaining child was 
a religieuse, — a Red Cross nurse. I found 
Mme. Pottier one day reading the "Lives of 
the Saints." "I like to read," she said, "all 
books that are good. I love well the good 
God." But she worked also, and knitted 
many a pair of stockings for us. First, how- 



Fidelissima, Picardie 179 

ever, the wool must be weighed. "It is just," 
she reiterated after each protest on my part. 
"My conscience will be easy so." And up a 
ladder she mounted to the loft, where stood 
scales designed to weigh sacks of flour. No 
weights being small enough, she took a few 
coppers from her pocket. "Voila!" she said, 
throwing them into the balance. "Remember, 
the skeins weigh six sous; when the stockings 
are done, you shall see, they will be the same." 
There was Mme. Gouge, beautiful and 
tragic, who came and cooked for us, in order 
to send her son to school in Amiens ; and even 
more pathetic, her brother-in-law, formerly 
the owner of the prettiest house in the village, 
who often accompanied her and served our 
meals. He was the village barber as well, 
and on a Saturday was busy all day in his 
shed, heating water, shaving M. le Maire and 
other of his neighbours, and presenting each, 
on the completion of the task, with a view of 
shaven cheeks, or clipped hair, in the broken 
bit of mirror which hung beside the door. 



180 A Village in Picardy 

Orderliness seemed to be M. Gouge's ruling 
passion; the arbours in the two corners of his 
garden, the round flower-bed in the centre, the 
grassy square, the gravel walks, — all were 
as well kept as if the shattered house were still 
tenanted, and Madame, his wife, were looking 
out as she used to do upon the garden she 
loved. 

Among the Picard soldiers, there was 
Caporal Levet, the boy-friend of M. l'Au- 
monier, who made so light of his wounds. 
"It is nothing," he repeated again and again 
after sharp fits of coughing brought on by 
exposure to the biting wind as he accompanied 
us during our week of fetes. "This is 
nothing; I am resting now. Soon I shall go 
back. My Colonel, he told me only to-day 
that I must go down to the Midi to train 
Moroccans. That is to the bayonet. Me, I 
do not like the bayonet, — the charges. One 
goes with the blacks, you know. I have been 
wounded twice. But," a shrug of the shoul- 
ders, "my Colonel says that I am the youngest, 



Fidelissima, Picardie 181 

— and I should go." Some one asked at one 
of the parties that he lead the Marseillaise. 
He protested for the first time. "We 
French," he said, "we are droll; we do not like 
to sing always of dying for the glory of la 
Patrie" But they die, nevertheless; and one 
is left only to wonder when his time will come, 
on what dark night, in the lull of the bombard- 
ment, when the blacks leap out of the trenches 
and lead the desperate charge. 

In Hombleux, in the church, beside the 
altar, hangs the village roll of honour, bearing 
the names of six sons of Picardy fallen in its 
defence. 

Roullard Pottier Pierre Commont 
Albert Gourbiere August Deslatte 
Robert Gautier Amide Bens 

Unknown heroes these, peasant names, rough- 
ly printed. Yet Hombleux, in the midst of 
its desolation, of its sorrow for those other sons 
and daughters forced into ignoble slavery, re- 







**,♦***. u«*4"*r~T*-> ***** 

A/vt auSL dbU^ &tr<^6 • 

[O yes, papa is strong, stronger than ten Boches.] 
18« 



Fidelissima, Picardie 183 

members its soldier dead. It remembers in 
prayer that France for which all have suffered. 
Near the illuminated scroll, upon its black 
background, stands a statue of Joan of Arc, 
and beneath it is placed this prayer: 

O bienheureuse Jeanne d'Arc! que notre France a 
besoin, a, l'heure presente, d'ames vaillantes, animees de 
cette esperance que rien ne deconcerte, ni les difficultes, 
ni les insucces, ni les triomphes passagers et apparents 
de ses ennemis; des ames qui, comme vous, mettent 
toute leur confiance en Dieu seul; des ames enfin que 
les efforts genereux n'effraient pas, et qui, ainsi que 
vous soldats, se rallient a, votre etendard portant ces 
mots graves: "Jesus! Maria! Vive labeur!" O Jeanne! 
ranimez tous les courages, faites germer de nobles 
heroismes et sauvez encore une fois la France qui vous 
appelle a son secours! 

Fidelissima,, Picardie! It was in Amiens, 
in the Library there, that I first saw the em- 
blazoned coat of arms of the province, and 
those of her famous cities, Peronne, Nesle, St. 
Quentin, Amiens, Noyon, Ham with its castle, 
and Corbie, with its crows. I had come by 
slow train from Paris, and waited perforce for 



184 A Village in Picardy 

the still slower train which was to drop me that 
night at Hombleux, the nearest railroad sta- 
tion to our Chateau. Snow was upon the 
ground; the sunlight sharp and cold. It cleft 
the airy spire of the Cathedral out of the blue 
sky like a diamond-powdered sword. It 
frosted the delicate azure of the rose window, 
and high up among the clustered pillars, threw 
prismic whorls that floated like flowers upon 
a rippled stream of light. In the Library, it 
fell upon tooled leather bindings, upon the 
gorgeous blazons, upon pages illuminated, like 
the white walls of the Cathedral, with ethereal 
fruits and flowers. But the day was all too 
brief. As my train puffed and rumbled away 
from the city, dusk enveloped the plain till 
the evening star — or was it an avion? — burned 
forth. Passengers entered or descended, the 
last being a batch of Tommies bound for the 
Cambrai front. They were a noisy, good- 
natured lot, who slammed their rifles into the 
racks, trod upon one another's toes, and wished 
heartily that "this bloomin' war was done." 



Fidelissima, Picardie 185 

At Chaulnes they got out; an American engi- 
neer followed, and I was left alone. In total 
darkness the train proceeded, the engine as we 
swung around the curves looking like a dragon, 
belching fire. Presently, out of the vast level, 
rose the moon; and with it came those detona- 
tions which we, even in our sheltered camp, had 
learned to associate with its beauty. The 
Boches were bombing Ham. 

Like my day in Amiens is my remembrance 
of Picardy; the dun plain, the windy sky, the 
play of light and shadow over both. The 
blazons given her by history glow anew in 
the heroisms of to-day. They form a glorious 
volume, illuminated with flowers as gorgeous 
as those traced by the monks of Corbie upon 
the pages of their Books of Chants, bound, as 
were they, with massive iron bands, — the iron 
bands of war. 



APPENDIX 




CAMZY ^ 

Survey made November, f£/7. 



Plan of the Village. 



APPENDIX 

Before the War 

1914 

1. Mme. Marie Gense — Had a few rabbits; good 

house. 

2. M. Noulin — Was a storekeeper; had rabbits and 

hens. 

3. M. Poiteaux (soldat).* 

4. M. Leon Tabary (living near Amiens). 

5. M. Huillard (soldat). 

6. M. Cottret (prisonnier civil). 

7. Mme. Auge — Had hens and rabbits; small garden. 

8. M. Huillard (see 5.) 

9. M. Gambard (at Compiegne). 

10. M. Thuillard, G. (at Bacquencourt) . 

11. Mme. Cordier — Had 10 cows, 2 bulls, 1 ox, 87 

pigs, 3 horses, 150 chickens, 150 rabbits, market 
garden, orchard. 

12. Mme. Carpentier, J. — Had 3 cows, 2 horses, 30 

hens, 50 rabbits, market garden. 

* Where no information is given as to property, no member 
of the family remains in the village. It should be understood 
that every family had some member, or members, with the 
colours, or avec les Bodies, or both. 



190 A Village in Picardy 

13. Mme. Picard — Had 2 cows, 1 horse, hens, rabbits, 

market garden. 

14. M. Thuillard, O. — Had 7 cows, 4 horses, 50 

hens, 30 rabbits, 10 hectares of land for garden. 

15. Mme. Brohon (at Voyennes). 

16. Mme. Moroy, R. (at Esmery-Hallon). 

17. Mme. Carpentier, R. — Had 2 horses, 21 rabbits, 

30 hens, garden. 

18. Mme. Lefevre — Had 2 cows, 2 horses, 50 rabbits, 

30 hens, market garden. 
19- M. Moroy — Had 1 cow, 1 horse, 1 pig, 30 rab- 
bits, 100 hens. 

20. M. Charlet (at Amiens). 

21. Mme. Moroy (dead). 

22. Mme. Tabary, G. — Had only a few rabbits; hus- 

band hostler at 23. 

23. Mme. Thuillard, G. — Had 2 cows, 3 horses, hens, 

rabbits, market garden. 

24. M. Touret (prisonnier civil). 

25. M. Lanne (at Ham). 

26. M. Henet (prisonnier civil). 

27. Mme. Butin — Had a few hens and rabbits; small 

garden. 

28. M. Touret (prisonnier civil). 

29. Mme. Roquet (dead). 

30. Mme. Correon — Had rabbits and hens; small 

garden. 

31. Mme. Desmarchez (at Esmery-Hallon). 

32. Mme. Delorme (at Amiens). 

33. M. Huyart (at Voyennes). 



Appendix 191 

34. M. Reuet (in Paris). 

35. M. Reuet (in Paris). 

36. Mme. Villette (at Voyennes). 

37. Mme. Cerf (prisonniere civile). 

38. Mme. Moroy (dead). 

39. M. Thuillard, C. — Had 2 cows, 2 horses, 25 

chickens, 200 rabbits, large market garden. 

40. Mme. Moroy (dead). 

41. Mme. Moroy (dead). 

42. Mme. Moroy (dead). 

43. Mme. Carpentier, R. (see 17). 

44. Mme. Butin (see 27). 

45. M. Thuillier, A. — Had 10 rabbits, 12 hens; was 

a cobbler. 

46. Mme. Moroy, Claire — Had 1 horse, 1 cow, rab- 

bits, hens. 

47. Mme. Delorme, O. — Had 100 rabbits, 40 hens, 

small garden. 
In 1914 Canizy had 445 inhabitants. 



November, 1917 

1. Lives at 37 in a lean-to; small garden. 

2. Lives at 5 in a partially ruined house; has an 

epicerie, in which we have stocked him, 1 pony, 
30 young rabbits, 4 hens. 

7. Lives at 7 in a barn; has 10 hens, small garden. 

8. House occupied by Tabary, M. ; has nothing. 

10. Mme. Payelle lives here in a barn; does not be- 
long in village; has nothing. 



192 A Village in Picardy 

11. Lives at 11 in a barn; has bought cow, horse, 24 

rabbits, 9 hens. 

12. Lives at 12 in a baraque; has a small garden. 

13. Lives at 1 6 in a barn; has large market garden 

and employs one worker (Mme. Correon). 

14. Lives at 18 in a shed; has 2 horses, 10 hens, 10 

rabbits, large garden. 

15. Mme. Musqua lives here; formerly factory work- 

er, never owned land, has nothing. 

17. Lives at 17 in a shed; has 3 hens, 2 rabbits, small 

garden. 

18. Lives at 18 in a partially ruined house; has 3 hens, 

large garden. In her stable she houses Mme. 
Barbier, a worker in the fields. 
19- Lives at 42 in one room; has a garden. 

23. Lives at 44 in an ell; has a cow, 8 hens, large gar- 

den. 

24. (Father of prisoner) lives here, with 46. 

30. Lives at 34 in a cottage; works for 13, has noth- 
ing. 

32. M. Lecart lives here in a cottage; formerly coach- 
man at Chateau; has nothing. 

39. Lives at 39 in a barn; has a large garden. 

42. Mme. Tabary, L., lives here in partially ruined 

house, never owned land; has a goat. 

43. Mme. Cerf, who used to rent 46, lives in a barn; 

has a few hens and a garden. 

44. Lives at 44, with her daughter (see 23). 

45. Lives at 16 in a shed; has a garden. 

46. Lives at 24 in a barn; has a garden. 



Appendix 193 

47. Lives at 47 in a chicken house; has 4 hens, 1 rab- 
bit. 

At the Chateau live three families, formerly employed 
on the estate. They have gardens. 

In all, there are 100 persons in Canizy. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: jrjfj 2001 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



